Accessibility Services
Job coaching
Coaching is a good way to strengthen the individual skills of an employee and to bring disability-related challenges in line with the professional tasks within the 1st labor market. Job coaching can be considered, for example, if the workplace and the associated requirements are not optimally barrier-free for the severely disabled employee and his or her individual disability-related challenges, or if the usual training by the employer is not sufficient and barriers persist.
In such a situation, difficulties may arise that can be dealt with directly at the workplace through the additional personnel resources of a professional job coach. Other occasions for job coaching can be changed tasks or new work requirements, a transfer within the university, disability-related performance and/or communication problems or even the resumption of work after a long absence due to illness.
Goals and process of a job coaching
In job coaching, the employee, the manager and the job coach work together to improve the working conditions for everyone involved and to consolidate the employee's professional participation. In this respect, the motivation and willingness to adapt of all parties involved are decisive for successful job coaching. The job coach works impartially and keeps the perspectives of the employee and the employer in mind.
Each job coaching is individually tailored to the employee and the respective workplace. Together with the manager, coaching goals are agreed upon and reviewed and further developed in regular joint discussions.
The objectives can therefore be very different. For example, the following can be considered
- Teaching methods for dealing with barriers in the workplace,
- Teaching key qualifications related to the job,
- Support in communicative processes at the workplace,
- stress management,
- Clarification of the functions of the employee at the workplace and/or in the team context,
- Teaching methods for self-organization and task structuring,
- ...
Job coaching usually lasts six to eight months; a one-time extension is usually possible if the agreed goals could not be achieved during this time, for example due to absences due to illness. The coach visits the employee during the entire coaching period at the workplace and, if necessary, also at the home office. The scheduling of appointments is based on the specific needs of the employee. At the start, the appointments take place more frequently; towards the end, there is a transition phase with less frequent appointments, in which the employee is prepared for working without a coach again.
Who is eligible to apply?
Employees with an equal status or a severe disability and a weekly working time of at least 15 hours can take advantage of job coaching.
Application
The application for job coaching is always made through the integration service. This service arranges the application with the employer, takes care of the cost absorption and commissions a suitable job coach. The cost bearers of job coaching are usually the Inclusion Offices, the Federal Employment Agency of Germany or the German Pension Insurance.
It is recommended that employees and trainees who want job coaching first contact the SBV. There, the project and further steps can be planned. If necessary, the SBV establishes contact with the integration service to initiate the application procedure.
Alternatively, employees and trainees can also contact the relevant integration service or the Landschaftsverband Ostwestfalen-Lippe directly.