nection with conference and testing rooms. It will provide sufficient privacy for administrative purposes and will not interfere seriously with the lighting or ventilation. In addition, these partitions can be quickly taken down, moved, and reerected with little trouble or expense. Today, appearance, comfort, utility, durability, and economy of floor space are details which are considered by commercial enterprises when expanding or establishing new offices. The USES likewise must consider these elements when remodeling old quarters or planning new local offices. The selection of space requires seasoned judgment, since aside from the usual governing factors there are other considerations which must be carefully weighed. Second-Floor Space For example, in some cases good second floor space has been rejected because of a prejudice more fancied than real. It has been amply demonstrated that first-or second-floor locations are equally satisfactory for large or small operations. Since good groundfloor locations are at a premium and those on corners have prohibitive rentals, second floors should have more tolerant consideration. Walking up a flight of stairs should not discourage an applicant, and it will not if he is sure of getting good service in a wellordered office. Where second floor space is used, every effort should be made to provide a stairway that is not too steep, one of sufficient width, equipped with handrails, well lighted and, if possible, with a halfway landing. If a first-floor location is selected provision should be made for a storm entrance so that drafts, distracting street noises, and dust can be reduced to a minimum. In recent years, many State offices of the USES have recognized the importance of proper housing and have taken decisive action to improve the appearance and lay-out of local offices but much still remains to be done. A survey might be conducted in each State to determine whether the appearance and working conditions of employment offices meet present-day standards for efficient operation. Among other things, it will probably show that many offices are inadequately lighted. The old-fashioned, direct lighting system with its gloomy, depressing effect should be discarded and modern, indirect, semi-indirect, or fluorescent type of lighting installed. Although more expensive to install, fluorescent lighting has proved more economical, generates less heat, and is the only solution in old buildings where the wiring will not carry a sufficient load of current to provide adequate lighting. Although desk lights augment the overhead lighting system, they concentrate the light in a small area, produce a harmful glare, and increase the expense of lighting. Good lighting has an important bearing on the productivity of the staff, and hence it is a valuable aid in reducing overhead. In addition, scientific lighting will permit the use of every square foot of space. Local power and light companies will give the technical advice necessary to solve office lighting problems. Sometimes an excessive amount of natural light can also cause discomfort. This may occur when many of the office windows face east or south. In that event, venetian blinds to prevent glare should be provided. Drafts, uneven heat, and overheating or underheating are, in many cases, responsible for colds contracted by the staff, thus increasing absenteeism and lowering the over-all efficiency of the office. Moreover, it has been found that the ill effects of overheating are greater than underheating. The problem of supplying an adequate amount of fresh air in the office is sometimes difficult, but unless provided for, the staff members become listless and their health may even be impaired. The gloom of dark interiors can be dispelled by painting the walls and ceiling with light colors. Cracked ceilings can be covered, using processed wood substitutes, some of which have sound-absorp tion qualities. Acoustical treatment of ceilings or walls will reduce noise and create conditions favorable to mental concentration and to a reduction of fatigue. It always is possible to do better work in quiet surroundings than in noisy ones. The shabby appearance of some offices is brought about by the use of ill-assorted, outmoded, shaky, and battle-scarred equipment. Odd pieces of equipment are hard to arrange, whereas desks of uniform size can be grouped effectively with a minimum loss of space. We pay attention to the furnishing of our homes so that we may enjoy them. Shouldn't we give some consideration to our place of work where one-third of our time is spent? Right and Wrong of Lay-Out Sometimes lay-out violates every scientific principle. Granted, some of it may be due to inadequate space; nevertheless, the expense of changes may well be justified. The benefits derived may be a possible reduction in staff, an increase in production, an elimination of congestion, and a simplifying of the problems of supervision and control. It is not easy to plan a new lay-out and put it into effect. Even though an architect is employed to draw up the plans after the location has been decided upon, both operating and technical staff must supply the knowledge of office procedure and office needs so that all the various operations can be carried out with a minimum of effort. Many mistakes can be avoided if sufficient time and thought is devoted to the various problems, followed by an insistence that requirements be met. The person assigned to the job must be someone with authority to make decisions regarding allocation of space, one who has a knowledge of the principles involved in producing a workable plan, and one who can win the cooperation of the persons affected by the changes to be made so that ill feeling will not result. Based on a knowledge and understanding of the I detailed duties of each staff member, the flow of traffic should be charted so that applicants can be directed to points of service with the least confusion. This can best be indicated on a floor plan by colored lines, arranging and rearranging templates representing desks until the most desirable combination can be effected. Unless the arrangement will work on the drawing, it has little chance of doing so in actual operation. The floor plan itself may be scaled onequarter inch to the foot, showing the position of each desk or other type of equipment. Whenever feasible, staff members should be seated in the best possible light for the type of work they perform. In a large office, the relationship between divisions must be established, the volume of work in each determined, and space assigned accordingly. A straight-line flow of work between departments is most desirable if it can be achieved, otherwise clerks and interviewers will be doing considerable unproductive work running from one place in the office to another. The Private Office Question Not many years ago it was generally believed that interviewers should have private offices because the nature of their work was confidential. Even today the necessity for privacy is frequently over emphasized. Private offices for those who do not really need them is a space-wasting practice, is expensive, interferes with the flow of work, detracts from the general appearance, makes supervision more difficult, and tends to lower the general effectiveness of individuals occupying them. Clear glass should be used in most of the partitions erected. Frosted windows obstruct the view of the receptionist, making routing of applicants more difficult. Furthermore, clear unobstructed vision facilitates supervision. Partitions, especially the higher type, prevent upward of 50 percent of the natural light from passing into the general office. Care, therefore, must be exercised to see that partitions are not erected in places where they would seriously interfere with the light required by clerical workers. Where partitions are not used, desks can be placed about 3 feet apart for interviewing work and slightly closer for clerical work. If desks are crowded too closely together, staff morale will suffer and the work output will be reduced. An effort should be made to place the stenographic pool where the noise made by the typewriters will not disturb staff members who are responsible for other phases of operation, such as interviewing. During the war period there was an increasing tendency toward the use of counters. Without question, service can thus be speeded up by this device, but counters should be used for repetitive business only, such as for the taking of claims and for receiving applicants at a reception point where the work is routine in nature and little time is involved in the transaction. No applicant should be expected to stand up at a counter to discuss his work history or a prospective job when his entire future may be at stake. The development of the reception point requires considerable thought because of its importance in the over-all operations of the office. The applicant entering the front door receives an immediate impression that influences his decision to remain or leave. The use of an elevated platform for the receptionist, with a counter facing the entrance on one side and surrounded on the other three sides by railing, has proved to be desirable. Standard equipment such as desks, chairs, files, and typewriters can readily be used on a platform so the purchase of special equipment is unnecessary. The 8-inch elevation provided by the platform will permit the receptionist to greet applicants at eye level and at the same time allow perfect vision to all points in the office, thus greatly facilitating the routing procedure. Conference Room a Necessity At least one conference room should be included in every plan. Staff members who occasionally need additional privacy should be encouraged to use the conference room when applicant problems cannot be readily solved at a desk in the general office. Conference rooms also may be used for the testing program; however, its use for that purpose may seriously interfere with its use for other staff purposes. With the growth of the industry service and counseling programs, testing activities should increase substantially, necessitating the inclusion of a testing room in the proposed lay-out. Wood floors are difficult to maintain where the volume of traffic is substantial. The use of asphalt tile or linoleum to cover them is recommended. They add not only to the appearance of the office by providing a proper setting for the equipment but also simplify maintenance. Two other features are quite frequently overlooked in planning an office. One is the necessity for providing space for coats and supplies, the other one is the need for a rest room for women. Coat racks are unsightly and take up productive space in the general office. Rest rooms for women employees are required under some state laws, but aside from that, they are desirable in that they add to the comfort and working morale of the staff. The rest room should be equipped with comfortable chairs and a cot for use in case of illness. Coming Next Month Improving public relations in the local office. ONE YEAR OLD AND DOING USES Places Nurses .. By RUTH COHEN Manager, Nurse Counseling THE NURSE Counseling and Placement Office in New York City is 1 year old. We are a going concern and have demonstrated how a dynamic organization like the United States Employment Service can adjust its operations to community and professional require ments. A little over 2 years ago, when the idea of opening an office for nurses in New York City was beginning to take root, we hardly dared to think that we could carry out our plans for an entirely different kind of employment office. For years we had been doing a small amount of nurse placement, but neither the quality of our applicants nor the acceptance of our service by employers was outstanding. Then, during the war years, when we were brought into close contact with the New York City Nursing Council for War Service and face to face with the acute shortage in the nursing field, we realized that if our service for nurses had been more adequate and more widely accepted by the public, we might have been in a position to help mobilize nurses for essential activities. High Placement Fees Exacted Conversation with leaders in the nursing field and direct requests for USES cooperation from large. nursing organizations convinced us of the need for a good nonfee-paying employment office for nurses. There were in New York City no nurse placement agencies, or registries, as they are familiarly known, which offered service except on a fee-paying or membership basis. All the nurse registries concentrated on private duty placement. The important fields of public health, industrial, and institutional nursing were hardly touched. Practical nurse placement was almost totally in the hands of commercial registries. It was not uncommon for the placement fees paid by a private duty nurse to aggregate $300 to $400 annually. Hence, there was needed a nurse placement office to meet proposed postwar expansion in the public health and hospital fields, and more. immediately to give needed service to veterans of the Army and Navy medical corps. In San Francisco, the USES regional experiment in social work placement had set a precedent in close professional cooperation. We decided to adapt some WELL of its experience to our project. We knew that the success of our proposed venture rested upon building confidence among leaders in the nursing field in our ability to create and maintain high professional standards. Every step in planning was checked wit outstanding representatives of the nursing profession Many nurses were apprehensive of governmental interference in the health field. In order to allay their fears, our set-up had to be patterned along the familiar, informal lines to which they were tradition ally accustomed. It soon became apparent that an effective nurs placement office would have to engage in both professional and auxiliary nursing service. Our list of occupations was amplified to include not only professional and practical nursing, but related medical occupations such as laboratory and X-ray technicians, physicians' and dentists' assistants, dental hygienists, and physical therapists. This was done in order to utilize fully the training which enlisted men and women had secured in the medical services, both in bedside care and technical occupations. An advisory committee was appointed before the office opened and includes leading members of the medical and nursing professions and the hospital field. representatives of the Veterans' Administration, and lay people interested in health activities. The com mittee has been kept closely in touch with office activities through monthly meetings; its advice has been sought and followed on all technical matters and problems involving the adaptation of basic USES policy to the specialized needs of the office. A nursing consultant with diversified experience gives the interviewing staff training and technical advice, handles difficult counseling problems, and is the liaison person with the nursing field. The line staff is now made up of two senior interviewers, eight counselors and interviewers, and five clerical workers. Before the office opened, specialists gave the staff an intensive training course of 2 weeks in the nursing and medical aspects of the job. Each new interviewer receives the same type of preparatory training. The office is housed in a centrally located office building at 119 West Fifty-seventh Street. The reception lounge, furnished with comfortable, colorful chairs and couches, lamps and periodical-covered tables, is separated from the interviewing room. The office is open from 8 a. m. to 8 p. m., 6 days a week. A 24-hour private duty referral service is maintained, a telephone answering service being used for night and holiday calls. Nation-Wide Interest Considerable publicity has been given to the project by the press and radio, professional publications, distribution of applicant literature by the Red Cross and Army and Navy Separation Centers, by direct mail, field visits, and telephone solicitation. The (Continued on p. 20) Staff Training For a Better USES N MOST States during the past year, training has come to be regarded as the best means by which managenent can develop the efficient type of service expected of a public service agency such as the USES. Nearly Il States have adopted a statement of policy on staff training, which establishes the training responsibilities of upervisors and describes the kinds of training that will be provided for the staffs. Almost every State has eveloped a 6-month training plan to overcome operating weaknesses and to meet new programs. Most States lso have central induction training for new interviewers. In addition, progress has been made in regular cheduling of advanced training for employment counseling and selective placement. More extensive training is our goal, but we are also asking, how can we improve training itself? What nethods and techniques can we develop that will clearly and graphically explain how to do a job, and at the ame time give actual practice in doing parts of the job? Trainees themselves have offered suggestions. Less mphasis on "lecture" or "reading bulletins to the staff" they say, and more discussions of actual cases and ypical problems will help them to carry the benefits of training over into better job performance. While the past year has seen an encouraging increase in the use of visual aids in training, some States warn gainst substituting them for discussions of specific problems, practice exercises, and group participation. Many States are finding that a combination of visual aids and the group participation method is the ideal form of raining. We must look at the results of training. We want operations to click; they must do so if the Employment Service is to do a good job. We shall never know whether training is helping us do a good job unless we valuate the training we have given; in other words, we must determine whether operations are improving as a result of the training. "Before" and "After" checks are one means of evaluation. Examination of work samples before and after training will tell us whether our training actually has been worth the time. If the training has failed, then we may want to look into our training methods to see if we are at fault. -DOROTHY BAILEY, Chief, Staff Training Section, Standards and Methods Division, USES. A CONTINUOUS A Regional Director Looks at Training By DON. LARIN Regional Director, OVERHEAD WHILE THE principle of training is thoroughly ccepted, the pressure of work facing local offices ontinually pushes management toward temporary xpedients, sacrificing the future to the present. The vicious circle of lack of efficiency and quality erformance because of lack of training, and lack of aining because of lack of time for training, has two kits. Administratively, time has some elasticity. It an be determined to a degree what will be done nmediately and in the future. Time can be taken r training, or training can be washed out of the icture except on a haphazard basis. When management objects to the time taken from roduction, for training, it is suggesting essentially ITEM. that anyone can slap a paint brush against a wall. At the same time management will admit that only a trained painter can do a first-rate job. If adequate training is to be done in the public employment service, administration must recognize training as a continuous overhead item. Administratively it must be determined that a certain amount of training shall have top priority with no relaxation from policy except in case of extreme emergency. Recognizing training as a tool of administration, line personnel must take responsibility for making time available to train, determine training need, and make such facilities as funds, instructors, materials, and other things available. Line personnel will continually face the problem of resisting pressure to drop training programs temporarily for other activities. Deviation from policy will bring other demands until, as an end result, training as a top-priority objective of administration is apt to go out the window. Not all objection to training is based upon the time element. Anyone who has experienced the monotony of listening to someone read a training manual for 3 or 4 days will understand that.. Training that has a kindergarten approach, insulting the intelligence of its victims, is another deadly approach to the subject. Training that consumes 5 days when the same results might have been achieved in 2, is a magnificent builder of sales resistance both among the immediate victims and the administrator or supervisor responsible for the personnel involved. In reality the administrator himself is at fault for allowing such training to be given. Even though he pleads to being "an ignorant layman," he still has the responsibility for making training programs yield maximum profit to his organization. A simple solution to overcome objection to training is to make it profitable in knowledge to the trainee. Holding lectures to a minimum, prohibiting reading manuals, teaching principles by individual solution of problems to illustrate the principle, and squeezing the water out of training programs are things with which administrators can profitably concern themselves. The minimum amount of formalized or class training necessary is a debatable subject. In Region VIII the question has been answered, partially at least, to our own satisfaction. It has been determined that a line interviewer needs to spend a minimum of 27.5 days of formal training during his first 6 months of duty; were he promoted to a supervisory interviewer, he would spend 9 additional days. Should the interviewer become specialized in counseling or selective placement, for instance, he would spend an additional 5 days, or a total of 41 days. Comparing the time spent in class training to that spent in learning a trade, a semiprofessional technical skill, or an occupation of lesser skill, it would not seem that the time involved is unreasonable. As a matter of fact, it is shaving the training program pretty thin, but it is a considerable step to undertake even that much in the public employment service. Follow-up Measures Success Another aspect of a training program that seems to call for constant attention is the follow-up of formal training courses. Not all supervisors will, of their own volition, continue on-the-job training to supplement and make more applicable the formal training program. Training should be a never-ending process for supervisors. Not all people respond to a course in the same measure. The supervisor should be required to note individual weakness and either train himself or arrange for other training. He should be required to see that training is used. It is a common phenomenon in the public employment service to discover that new personnel who have recently finished training are doing a first-rate job, and to find 6 months later that they seem to have lost all application of their training. Perhaps one of the reasons training is such a problem is the fact that top personnel in the organization are too often neglected. When a training or retraining program is launched, the administrator should make certain that supervisory personnel have been exposed to, and understand, the training that may be aimed at interviewers, managers, or others. A supervisor may not be as proficient in performance of a function as the individual who is engaged daily in an operation, but he should at least have as good a basic understanding as the person performing the operation. Unfortunately, perhaps, subordinates have an unhappy faculty of spotting a phony. Despite rank. they do not have too much respect for a supervisor who they feel doesn't know as much as they do about an operation. In Region VIII, an attempt has been made to formalize the entire training program within the USES by covering the entire field of operations. The training program is designed to carry through a standardized course for every individual in the USES, recognizing the need in accordance with his position. In addition, the training program in Region VIII is pointed at giving all personnel a complete background of training to promote the wider understanding necessary to effective operation. The appreciation course in other functions with which an individual may not be immediately concerned, yields dividends. An interviewer who is not a counselor, at least needs sufficient knowledge to recognize a counseling case when he is faced with one. That somewhat vague and mysterious term "professionalization," which is so commonly used in our Service, needs interpretation. Professionalization in simpler terms is training; it is training of personnel with proper qualifications, to perform satisfactorily the functions of the public employment service. No calling ever became a "profession" by wishful thinking. Professionalization is a long and tedious struggle. But to prove that almost any handicap in professionalization can be overcome, it is necessary only to look at the history of medicine. It wasn't so long ago that the physician used gourd rattles and incantations, and the surgeon was held in less esteem than a court jester. The USES can be thankful that it doesn't have to begin from an equally lowly base point. Training Exchange DURING THE past year two devices were adopted for exchanging experiences on staff training: STAFF TRAINING NOTES and STAFF TRAINING EXCHANGE. The first is an informal bi-monthly publication for training supervisors, containing descriptions of training programs and methods used in States or local offices and is a medium for discussion of problems met by training supervisors; the second makes available to all States training materials and aids developed in other States. |