The Award Ribbon
How to Use this Handout
Many of the people served by the workforce system have had little or no recognition for things they have done right with their life. They are more used to criticism than praise. They often have nothing on paper that acknowledges their accomplishments. If you want to be successful especially with the hard-to-employ, you need to appropriately celebrate progress at each step and not wait until you can celebrate victory over the problem. So a person making an appointment at a drug counseling program would deserve a ribbon instead of waiting until they complete treatment. Someone starting a GED program should get a ribbon when they start and every time they pass a test instead of waiting until they get their GED. A person with a disability that works hard to make it less of a barrier to employment should get a ribbon. Do not give out the ribbon easily, but use them to encourage continued progress.
Write in the center of the ribbon why you are giving it to the person. Develop a ribbon giving ritual celebration including things like having other people present, applause, handshakes and a speech by the ribbon recipient about how they accomplished this goal. Taking a photograph and printing it on a computer is a great celebration tool. Give the person a copy of the picture and get permission from them to post it where other people will see with an explanation about why the person got the ribbon.
Put the ribbons on different colored paper. You can cut out the ribbon itself or use the whole piece of paper. Encourage people to show their ribbons to other people, put them up where the live or if they are homeless give them some kind of waterproof folder to keep them in. The ribbon and the ritual celebration become very significant moments in the lives of the people we serve. Ribbons and celebrations will increase motivation to keep making progress and significantly raise self-esteem even in very hard-to-employ populations.
If you serve adults or youth that are hard-to-employ, you should bring Larry’s training and consulting to your organization. He offers many workshops focused on specific types of hard-to-employ populations. His training From “I Don’t Want to Work” to “I Got A Job!” is based on the feedback of hundreds of hard-to-employ people that eventually went to work. Find out what changed their motivation and put it into your program to make employment progress. The Revolutionary Captain and Coach Approach to Case Management will show you how to help hard-to-employ people case manage their own lives and employment process. These are only two of the many workshops Larry provides that will give you new and more effective tools to work with the hard-to-employ. Larry also has extensive consulting experience that shows management how to upgrade the weak parts of their programs and put state-of-the-art practices into their organization so it becomes a springboard to employment for the hard-to-employ. For more information about how you can bring Larry’s training and consulting on the hard-to-employ to your organization click here to contact Larry Robbin now!
Click here to get the Award