Review day and three versions of the truth
Your social enterprise employs or trains people who face barriers to work: a café staffed partly by adults with learning disabilities, a print workshop for people in recovery, a grounds maintenance team for young people leaving care. Each person has a job coach or key worker and works alongside a supervisor in the trading business.
Every twelve weeks there is a progress review. The job coach brings her notebook. The supervisor remembers that the trainee is now confident on the till but still struggles with the coffee machine at busy times. The support plan is a Word document last updated at the previous review. The trainee's own view is asked at the meeting and written on the back of the agenda. Nobody can quickly say what the goals from last time were, or which skills have been signed off since.
Why progress is hard to record
In a work integration social enterprise, progress happens on the shop floor in small steps, and the people who see it are busy doing the work.
- Supervisors see progress daily but have no quick way to note it.
- Job coaches keep detailed notes in their own format.
- Support plans are documents, rewritten at each review rather than updated.
- Skills sign-offs are ticked on paper checklists kept in a folder.
- Funders and commissioners want progression evidence in their own terms.
What support each person needs, and how progress should be judged, are for your staff and the person themselves. We do not advise on support practice. We make the record easy to keep and easy to use.
What scattered progress costs
The trainee feels it first. A review that cannot remember what was agreed last time is not much of a review, and small achievements that were never written down are not celebrated.
Staff spend hours before each review gathering notes, and funders asking for progression evidence get answers built from memory. When a job coach leaves, her notebooks leave with her and the new coach starts over.
One progress record, fed from the shop floor
What we build is a record for each person that brings the notebook, the plan and the checklist together.
- Each person has a profile with their goals, the support they have asked for, and the skills relevant to their role, written in plain language they can read, with easy-read versions where needed.
- Supervisors sign off skills on a phone or tablet as they see them, such as 'uses till on own during quiet periods', with the date.
- Job coaches add notes to the same record, with private notes kept separate from those the trainee and supervisor can see.
- Goals set at a review are recorded with a target date and reviewed at the next meeting, which shows what was agreed and what happened.
- Review dates are scheduled and reminders go to the job coach and supervisor, with a summary of progress since last time ready before the meeting.
- Progress summaries for funders or commissioners are produced from the same record, using the progression measures they ask for.
| Who | What they add | What they see |
|---|---|---|
| Supervisor | Skills sign-offs, short shop floor notes | Goals and skills for their team |
| Job coach | Support notes, review outcomes | Everything for their caseload |
| Trainee | Their own comments at reviews | Their goals, skills and shared notes |
| Manager | Nothing routinely | Summaries across the programme |
The next review
Before the review, the job coach opens the summary: three new skills signed off by the supervisor since last time, one goal met and one partly met, and a note that busy lunchtimes are still hard. The trainee sees the same summary in easy-read form and adds that he would like to try the kitchen.
The review sets two new goals, which are in the record before everyone leaves the room. When the funder asks for progression figures that quarter, they come from the same records.
Is progress recording like this in your enterprise?
- Job coaches keep progress notes in their own notebooks.
- Support plans are rewritten at each review.
- Skills sign-offs are on paper checklists.
- Reviews start by trying to remember what was agreed last time.
- Progression evidence for funders is pieced together by hand.