Customised employment

Overview

Customised employment is one approach within Supported employment and has been designed for people with disability who may not succeed through traditional job-seeking methods. It is a person-centred approach that focuses on individual strengths, interests and conditions for success, creating job roles that match both the person’s and the employer’s needs rather than forcing people into pre-existing vacancies and roles.²

Customised employment developed in the early 2000s in the United States and has been used widely in the US and internationally since then.³

Unlike traditional models, customised employment involves negotiating and tailoring job tasks to suit the individual, and the shaping of a job opportunity that is valued by both the person and mainstream employers . 

Typically, customised employment involves three techniques:

• job carving: crafting a job out of some elements or tasks of a job description
• job negotiation: combining tasks from multiple job roles into a new job description
• job creation: a new job description is created from unmet business needs identified during discussions with the employer.⁴

There is increasing evidence that customised employment generates outcomes for people with significant disability, with some research documenting employment outcomes of 45-71%.⁵

Key strategies for success

The customised employment model has at least four ingredients of success including:

• a thorough ‘discovery’ process that identifies a person’s skills, interests, and conditions for success before job development begins
• job search planning, where information gathered during the discovery phase is used to develop a list of potential employers. These employers are then contacted for informational interviews, which may include a casual conversation with a prospective employer and/or a discussion and site tour
• job modification and negotiation with employers to customise tasks and hours of work within existing roles or create new roles aligned with the person’s strengths
• post-placement support including ongoing workplace assistance and training as needed. ^{6 7}