Lesson 2

Situational Assessments - slide 1

Situational Assessment: NOT
simulated
work samples
environments

I’d like for us to take a few minutes to think about situational assessment. Now most people in programs today, and I’m probably sure you’re no exception, would say that they use situational assessments to determine customer choice as well as to identify the strengths and abilities of the individuals in the job matching process. I think however it’s important to discuss what situational assessments are not and it may seem strange to start in that place, but I think different people, different programs have different concepts of what they think a situational assessment would entail.
When I think of a situational assessment, I do not think about going out into a workplace and observing and then gathering up some work supplies and taking them back to another environment such as my sheltered workshop or for the person’s home for that matter and practicing to see if the individual could complete those skills or tasks. Now there are many reasons why I don’t feel situational assessments can be simulated work samples within simulated environments. The first and foremost reason is that when we take the individual and put them in a structured sort of testing situation where there are no external factors that would impact him or her, much the same as those factors that would be in the workplace would be present, then we don’t really see how the person would react

So for instance, if we have the individual in a simulated work environment then we don’t have the opportunity to see how the person is going to respond to coworkers, we don’t have the opportunity to see how the individual would respond to something that happens suddenly or unexpectedly within the workplace. We don’t see really the actual pace that the worker may have to perform at within the workplace, because we are not seeing how fast the employees are working within that location.

Now I could go on with many, many other examples, but I think it is very difficult if not impossible to simulate all the characteristics of a real workplace if we try to use a simulated environment for our situational assessments. So for me a situational assessment is going to take place in a real work environment where the person has to interact with coworkers and has to complete actual job duties that he or she may do if employed in the same type of job in the community.