Employee scheduling is an extremely time-consuming and complicated process. However, when it comes to long-term care, employee scheduling also involves additional considerations, such as severe worker shortages and increased demand for long-term care from an aging population.
Providers must be able to balance delivering high-quality care with relatively low staffing levels, tight budgets, and high employee turnover. Administrators must also try to create consistent and predictable schedules to help nurture staff and resident relationships. They must do their best to maintain care ratios in the face of unexpected vacancies. They also have to ensure the only the most qualified workers are scheduled, control overtime as well as worker burnout.
These factors are challenging to manage using manual tools. Many providers are now turning to scheduling software to address their unique staffing needs. Here are just a few ways that employee scheduling software could help administrators oversee the complex scheduling process their dynamic workforce requires.
Quickly Create Schedules And Fill Open Shifts
Relying on manual spreadsheets to track employee availability, shift assignments, or time off requests is time-consuming and burdensome for supervisors and administrators. An employee scheduling tool allows you to consolidate relevant employee data in one centralized location.
Useful Information : time tracker
With automated scheduling, administrators can ensure that only eligible employees are scheduled and that only qualified per diem workers are notified when shifts become available.
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Eliminating the time-consuming and inefficient process of manual scheduling frees supervisors up to focus on new training and other initiatives to provide better care and support to their clients.
Reduce Overtime and Control Labor Costs
Manual shift scheduling often involves last-minute changes where workers are then flooded with shift requests from managers at different locations. Managers unable to find workers for open shifts are then forced to work the unfilled shifts themselves. Not only can this result in overtime, but it also can lead to employee burnout. This is quite a heavy price to pay in an industry that already suffers from worker shortages.
With employee scheduling software, those in charge of scheduling have access to real-time data regarding a worker’s hours on any given day. This information provides insight into who is available to pick up extra hours under the 40-hour threshold. Job costing reports can also provide management with the transparency they need to see labor expenses at each facility.
With an employee scheduling system, employees also have 24/7 access to their schedules. This allows them to pick up extra shifts, which can lead to quicker fill rates, reduced overtime expenses, and improved worker satisfaction.
Employees who have the ability to make decisions about their schedule have higher job satisfaction, feel more loyalty to their employer, and typically perform better.
Maintain Workforce Transparency and Track Credentials
For long-term care providers, their credentials often need to be renewed every one to two years. Manual tracking of certifications and informing workers when they need recertification is another time-consuming but crucial aspect of shift scheduling.
When this process is automated using scheduling software, employees can be notified when they are eligible for recertifications. Automating this process not only reduces management stress, but it also reduces the risk of scheduling under-qualified workers.
Along with tracking training and credential information, web-based employee scheduling software can provide an audit trail for scheduling discrepancies or incident reports. Long-term care providers who are funded by the state are often subject to scrutiny. With shift scheduling software, providers can establish a trustworthy audit trail to show compliance with state regulations or run reports if any incident occurs.
Online Scheduling Software Fuels A Strategic Scheduling Process
Optimizing your scheduling process is critical, especially in an industry that finds itself in a crisis by a worker shortage and surging demands for service. Healthcare employee scheduling software and a strategic scheduling process can address many of the challenges that long-term care administrators face.
By investing in scheduling software, employers can navigate the challenge of improving employee retention in long-term care and other healthcare Industries better while also providing the highest quality of care to their customers.
