Is your healthcare HR team struggling with developing an effective system for managing 24-hour shift schedules? Do they spend hours a day dealing with absences, requests for time off, and finding the right employees to put into the correct time slots? Do they find that communicating with their mobile workforce is often hit and miss?
If so, providing solutions that assist them with communication and auto-rostering, as well as providing employee self-service software to your scheduled employees, could be the solution you’re looking for. These systems are especially helpful for businesses in the healthcare industry that are often working with various specialties, personalities, and skill sets that affect the level of care patients receive.
Tips on Developing and Facilitating 24-Hour Schedules
There are a number of solutions available to the business owner who wants to make life easier for his or her HR team. Fortunately, many of these solutions also have the added benefit of healthier bottom lines and happier teams. Here are some quick tips on facilitating a seamless scheduling process based on effective software.
Implement Scheduling Software
If your schedules need to be developed based on pay rates, skills, availability, and other factors, it can often seem like an impossible puzzle for your HR team to put together. If one piece doesn’t fit or is lost, the entire final product doesn’t work and your patients are ultimately the ones who suffer.
Utilizing effective scheduling software can help take some of the heavy lifting off your HR administrators’ shoulders and allow them to seamlessly create schedules that take all factors into account.
Provide Employee Self-Service Software
When employees can manage their own schedules conveniently from their own devices, they have instant access to their schedules and can easily communicate about absences, scheduling leave time, or requesting shift changes.
Requiring those who work long hours in the stressful healthcare environment to punch in and punch out or record hours on inconvenient spreadsheets increases the likelihood of mistakes and misreporting. It can also make for frustrated and unhappy employees. Make time management easier for them with a simple solution.
Consider a Program That Offers Auto-Rostering
Automatic scheduling utilizes an algorithm that creates optimized schedules based on the information your HR team inputs. It’s a resource to create shifts based on nearly every category, including specialties, pay grade, availability, and job title. This helps your HR time save time and frustration, and also helps your bottom line by minimizing overtime and reducing scheduling oversights.
Scheduling Benefits of Mobile Workforce Solutions
Utilizing a mobile workforce solution for 24 hour shift schedules has numerous benefits for both your HR team and your employees who must adhere to the schedules created. It is especially beneficial for clinics, hospitals, and other healthcare facilities that must maintain the proper staff at all times of day and night. Here are a few of the most beneficial perks.
Provides Instant Access to Schedules
When both your HR team and your employees have instant access to their schedules, mistakes and oversights go down and communication goes up. HR team members can quickly make changes based on sickness or absence, and employees can easily check to see when and where they’re working and request a change if necessary. By allowing shift workers to utilize their personal smart devices when checking their schedules, they can proactively manage them at any time and from anywhere.
Reduces Scheduling Demands
Your HR team already faces a number of demands. If you can implement technology that reduces the pressure of developing and managing complicated shift schedules, you can free them up to focus on other matters of importance. Automated software is also much less likely to make mistakes as you are taking out the human factor. When you offer your HR team a tool that makes their lives easier, they’ll feel appreciated and know that you respect their time.
Provides Consistent and Efficient Communication
If your HR team is constantly fielding calls, texts, and emails requesting schedule changes or reporting sickness, steps can easily be missed and mistakes can be made. This is also a frustrating process for your HR team as they struggle to maintain a schedule that takes into account numerous changes. Scheduling software provides a consistent and efficient form of communication that keeps all messages in one place. This encourages frequent communication at all levels and minimizes the chances for miscommunication.
Managing a facility that requires staffing 24 hours a day is not an easy job. When you take into consideration the added pressures that come along with a healthcare facility that must also care for patients, it’s easy for all members of the team to become overloaded or frustrated. By utilizing a system that allows for easy scheduling based on customizable factors and by allowing employees easy access to manage their schedules, you are taking pressure off your HR team and increasing overall company morale.
