Allison Rossett en Lisa Schafer beschrijven in hun boek Job aids & performance support wat zijn verstaan onder performance support:

What is performance support?

A helper in life and work, performance support is a repository for information, processes, and perspectives that inform and guide planning and action.

Let's look at each component in this defnition:

'A helper in life and work'

That's the spirit of the concept. Performance support represents converged information and work, residing next to the individual, in close proximity to the challenge in order to offer help when help is needed.

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'Repository for information, processes, and perspectives'

Performance support must store and make accesible critical information, processes, wisdom and perspectives.

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'Informs and guides'

Sometimes a situation is so unforgiving that a specific response must be informed by performance support, either via technology or a print aid.

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'Planning and action'

Early definitions of job aids highlighted procedures, action and information. Rossett and Gautier-Downes expanded the definition to incorporate more cognitive perspectives that include approaches to a problem and ways of reflecting and analyzing.

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What is not performance support?

Not everything is performance support. For example, tools and instruction are not.

Tools, like flash lights and office chairs, are often confused with job aids because they too support people in their work. However, there is an important distinction between tools and performance support. ... The support of work is necesarry but not sufficient to make something a job aid or performance support. To qualify, the object must house valued information, processes or perspectives that target a need or task.

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Instruction is not performance support. It is planned experience that enables an individual to acquire skills and knowledge to advance the capability to perform. Instruction builds human capacity.

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What is to love about job aids?

Why were job aids popular? Why do they remain so today? Three answers: convergence, simplicity and relevance.

Identified with the work, job aids go where the action is, in straightforward fashion. ... Job aids earn affection because they help handle tasks that matter to them in a not-very-costly fashion. ...

Technology presents even tastier possibilities today. We call them performance support. Job aids are a familiar form of performance support.

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Definition of Performance Support

A helper in life and work, performance support is a repository for infomration, processes and perspectives that informs and guides thought and action.

Benefits of Job Aids and Performance Supports

• Converged. Job aids and performance support are one with the work. They converge with the task.
• They go where the work is, rather than taking you away from the work to go to training. Job aids and performance support are there, at the desktop, in the care, or on the run, when and where they are needed.
• Simplicity. No frills, no fuss, just focus.
• Personalized. Some performance support understands you and adjusts information and guidance accordingly.

• Although performance support and tools support performance, only performance support stores information to be used by people to decide what to do. Documentation, checklists, and computer software are examples of performance support. A stapler and a portable vacuum cleaner are examples of tools; no information there.

• Instruction, training, or education provide preparation to perform, just in case somebody needs to know or do something. Performance support is more targeted, immediate, and specific. People turn to performance support to deal with something in particular.

• Instruction changes the insides of people, what they know by heart. Performance support is outside, an asset to which people refer when in need.

Bron: Job aids & performance support, Allison Rossett & Lisa Schafer