ABA Owls

Welcome!

For our April podcast episode, we discussed staff reinforcement and motivation (MO). In case you’d like to listen, you can go to our podcast page or use your preferred podcast app and search “Chirping with ABA Owls” – we’re on iTunes, Podbean and other platforms.

If you prefer to read rather than listen, carry on with this post.

What is Reinforcement and MO?

We do love a definition, here are some that we found helpful:

1 – “Reinforcement involves consequences that strengthen behaviour. To strengthen a behaviour means to increase the likelihood that it will occur again in the future”. From Beam ABA services

2- “Reinforcement is the backbone of the entire field of applied behavior analysis (ABA)”. From www.appliedbehavioranalysisedu.org

In terms of ABA and working with our clients, we strive to assess exactly what reinforces their behaviour, therefore reinforcement is personalised and depends on the individual. 

Not everyone is good at telling you what they like or what they are motivated for. Even if they have excellent communication skills and are able to clearly tell you their preferences, it doesn’t mean they will.

It is important to bear in mind that just because someone prefers something, doesn’t mean that will reinforce their behaviour. Something becomes a reinforcer when it increases the target behaviour. 

For example, imagine that a staff member prefers to have a longer lunch break, but that the target behaviour is getting the staff member to arrive on time for meetings. Giving them a longer lunch break, won’t necessarily increase the behaviour of arriving on time for meetings. What if the meeting is after lunch? 

You need to make sure if what you are supplying is appropriate for the behaviour you want to increase and if it actually reinforces people’s behaviour – that is, it increases the behaviour. 

Now onto motivation and how it works with reinforcement – we need to know what people are motivated for in order to reinforce them appropriately. 

Here’s another definition: “Motivation is the process that initiates, guides, and maintains goal-oriented behaviors. Motivation involves the biological, emotional, social, and cognitive forces that activate behavior. In everyday usage, the term “motivation” is frequently used to describe why a person does something”- www.verywellmind.com

We need to fully understand what motivates people and how we can use that to reinforce the behaviours we want to increase.

Where and When to Reinforce

Time and place can be hard to choose.
We used to work in an organisation that would praise staff with a certificate during the weekly meeting but even with the best intentions, this might not be the ideal scenario for everyone.
Some people feel uncomfortable having attention thrown towards them, so they might not find the “reinforcer” actually reinforcing. The certificate worked as a tangible and social reinforcer, and would highlight a particular behaviour the staff member had engaged in.
Another facet of this weekly “reinforcer” is that it became expected –  every week there had to be one staff member selected from each team. This causes the “reinforcer” to lose its value and strength, as staff can become satiated.
We also didn’t take any data on whether giving the certificate would increase a particular work behaviour – we can’t really call it a reinforcer if we don’t know its effects.

Assessing Preferences
First off, assessment of what staff members prefer should be done regularly. Motivation fluctuates and changes all the time, sometimes we want to do something, other times we want to do something else and we are influenced by our experiences. Assuming that your staff will always want the same reinforcer is a mistake and it might lead to a drop in performance. 

A study done by Byron, Gilroy and Hantula suggests that you should assess preference every couple of weeks or even more frequently. This is easier said than done but we believe that human resources are incredibly important, and if they aren’t valued or reinforced appropriately staff won’t perform their best work behaviour possible.  

Reinforcing

There are many variables to consider when you should reinforce behaviour: What is the target behaviour? Do they need constant reinforcement for it? Can it be spaced out?
The most crucial aspect is that the reinforcement should be delivered contingent on the target behaviour occurring. Even though there are procedures for non-contingent reinforcement, these need to be done appropriately, and most companies or employers won’t have the time and resources to do this – which can cause unwanted results.

There are many studies that show that reinforcement is the most effective when delivered immediately after the behaviour occurred, but with neurotypical adults in the work environment it’s not always possible to reinforce immediately. This is why it is important to know what you are reinforcing, what you will use as a reinforcer and then decide on a schedule (when to reinforce).

How to Assess Preferences? How to Reinforce?

Assessing reinforcers and motivation can be difficult and time consuming. Even when people are asked to complete a survey about what they prefer, they aren’t always honest. A survey can also be seen as another task to do. Even if you interview your staff on a 1:1 basis, they might not want to tell you (their employer or manager) exactly what they would like. This can be because there’s a lack of trust, they feel embarrassed, or any other reason you are not aware of. 

This being said, it’s still important to ask staff what they want, even if it’s difficult and time consuming.
You can use a mixture of interview and survey – but whether you choose one method or to combine them, try to make it as less demanding as possible.
A mixture of open questions, array of options and “would you rather” can prove to be more effective than just using open-ended questions.

Consider reinforcers that you can actually offer in a sustainable manner, there are different kinds but we will briefly discuss two different types.
Tangibles can vary from objects to activities. For example, tickets for the cinema are a tangible item to gain access to an activity. Different people like different things, some staff might like learning, so having access to workshops or training can be valuable for them.
Social reinforcement can be a manager complimenting you on your work – sometimes in private, sometimes in front of others.
Research on this topic has shown that a mix of social and tangible reinforcement seems to be the most effective. 

You can also observe staff on the kind of leisure activities they discuss, what tasks they work on first and which ones they avoid – be mindful that being observed can make people feel uncomfortable, don’t be over imposing.

Define a behaviour and test a reinforcement. Here’s an example: “Finishing a big assignment within the deadline”. This can be a bit of a vague target, you might have to define what qualifies as “big” or even define which behaviours are necessary to finish assignments on time – such as organising their time, scheduling catch up meetings, etc.
If the staff member loves going to the cinema, and you give them movie tickets for “finishing a big assignment within the deadline”, notice if their behaviour improves in future assignments. 

It’s complicated to reinforce staff for every little behaviour – it might also be complicated to find the resources to provide reinforcement. In the end, it’s all about balance: Applying a reinforcement interval that keeps staff motivated to perform certain work behaviour and using preferred items/activities that will increase or maintain behaviour.

Why Should Staff be Reinforced?

People might ask: why do I need to add more reinforcement when they already get paid a salary? That should be motivating enough for them to work. 

If a salary was enough of a reinforcement, then people would not change jobs.
Let’s look into what a salary actually reinforces. A staff member receives a salary for attending work for a certain amount of hours, they receive their wages on a weekly or monthly basis. If they are late performing tasks, they do not get the salary deducted – nor should they! Therefore, the salary is not reinforcing their productivity, it’s reinforcing them showing up for work consistently. People who work on commission, for example in sales, have to engage in certain behaviours in order to earn their commission – in this situation the commission is working as motivation for the behaviour of selling more, but it will only be a reinforcer if the behaviour is maintained or improved.

If you need staff to display more specific behaviours within the work day, then you’ll have to reinforce them for those behaviours. You can listen to more examples about this topic on our podcast episode.

End Thoughts and Resources

We’ve been on both ends, as the employee and as the manager, and we find it vital to understand reinforcement and what people are motivated by.

It can really make a difference on your staff’s productivity and the overall turnover in the workplace. 

If you’d like to learn more on this topic, there is an excellent course about OBM (Organisational Behaviour Management) run by Chief Motivating Officers –  www.chiefmotivatingofficers.com 

Here is the source for the article we referenced regarding reinforcement frequency: Byron, W., Gilroy, S. & Hantula, D. A. (2012). Temporal (in)stability of employee preferences for rewards. Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, 32, 58-64. https://doi.org/10.1080/01608061.2012.646854

We hope you’ve enjoyed this post (and the podcast episode, if you’ve listened to it).

You can also follow us on Instagram (@ABA_owls), send us an email on aba.owls.uk@gmail.com or leave us a comment below.

Thank you for reading,

Carla and Lauren

Welcome!

In November we released a new podcast episode called “Training Staff: Introduction” to get you through your Monday. If you’d like to listen, you can go to our podcast page or use your preferred podcast app and search “Chirping with ABA Owls”, we’re on iTunes, Podbean and other platforms.

In the off chance you would rather read than listen, this post will summarise the episode. 

Training staff is an extensive topic, and we will be covering it throughout 2022 – but for now, we are simply introducing it. 

Real Life Scenarios

It’s fair to say that we’ve all had moments when we felt that we didn’t know what we were doing – life is essentially having these moments happening constantly – JOY! And this rings true when starting a new job, we lose track of what is up or down, what we should be doing, etc. 

Being appropriately trained is critical – luckily, ABA can help.

We go into more detail in the podcast episode, but here are two scenarios we’ve gone through.

First Scenario: not trained on how to differentiate stimuli. When working in a jewelry shop and asked to find a particular bracelet, Carla was unable to do it as the drawings in the box were nearly identical even though the bracelets inside were distinct. 

Second Scenario: Not enough training to master skill. Lauren needed 2 weeks to be able to efficiently and accurately book and change patient appointments. She was shown how to use the booking system once, asked to demonstrate if she had understood it, and that was it. Various mistakes were made which were most likely corrected by her superior.

Training

First off, we want to make clear what we mean when we use the term “training”. Training is teaching AND reinforcing responses in order to shape behaviour into various actions that will likely happen in the future.

However, we have to account for the fact that many times, people leave out the reinforcement part of training. Even though sitting in school and being taught math (e.g. multiplication) is considered receiving training, without the skills being reinforced, there’s a high probability of that skill becoming faulty. Other forms of training include being shown how to use a booking system or even being taught how to speak.

When we search “training staff”, there are many resources shown: websites, articles, courses, etc. 

A particular website we visited: edge point learning.com”, contains an article that summarises 10 different types of employee training.
Their 10 types are listed as follows: Instructor-led training; eLearning; Simulation employee training; Hands-on training; Coaching or mentoring; Lectures; Group discussion and activities; Role-playing; Management-specific activities; Case studies or other required reading.

Imagine a circle divided into 10 slices and that each slice represents a different kind of training. What seems to happen quite often, is that only a couple of slices are used. So, trainers, managers, and other people in the “trainer” position, will choose a few ways of training someone, but will neglect other forms of training. The training circle will be incomplete, and so will that person’s ability to perform her job.

Common terms used are “slow learner”, “fast learner”, “natural learner”, etc. These terms can cause certain expectations from people, whether high or low, and these expectations can be detrimental towards training. For example, if someone is labeled a “natural learner” they might not receive needed training as they are expected to be able to learn the skills by themselves. This can lead to a defective skill repertoire, where the employee commits unnecessary mistakes. 

Training is a very rich and vast area and we do want to acknowledge that it is an enormous topic to cover.
People trained in OBM (Organisational Behaviour Management) do cover this area quite extensively and if you are interested, you can always listen to The Behaviour Business podcast or The business of behavior podcast.

Using ABA

We thought we would mention some different types of ways we use prompting in training, what they are and an example of their use. 

Verbal prompts –  verbal prompt involves telling the trainee the answer, giving a verbal cue, such as, the beginning sound of the answer, and/or giving the direction more than once. For example, telling a staff member “tell him to put his hands down” when dealing with challenging behaviour.

Gesture/point prompts – a point, hand gesture, or head nod to encourage participation normally prompted by a natural cue. If we think back to the jewelry shop example, you can point to the drawer where the correct bracelet is.

Visual prompts – is a picture or cue that the trainee sees which provides information about the correct answer. This can involve a visual schedule, video, photograph, drawing, flashing a card with the right answer, etc. When Lauren started her new job, it would’ve probably been helpful to have a sequence of pictures of what steps she should take in order to make patient bookings.

Modeling prompts – this type of prompt involves the teacher/trainer demonstrating the skill first and then asking the trainee to repeat it. Example: showing a new member of staff how to search items in the product inventory system. 

Fading prompts – Prompt fading is the process of systematically reducing and removing prompts that have been paired with an instruction/action, allowing the trainee to independently respond correctly. 

As mentioned at the beginning, this topic is quite extensive, and we will be delving into it slowly.
We hope you join us and find it informative and helpful. 

You can also follow us on Instagram (@ABA_owls), send us an email on aba.owls.uk@gmail.com or leave us a comment below.

Thank you for reading,

Carla and Lauren