Advance Systems has an efficient team who are professional in all areas and the set-up of the system was easy. Each unit manager was shown how to operate it and training was minimal as a result, the ongoing relationship with Advance Systems Ireland is excellentAndrew Meaney, St. Bernard’s Group Homes.
St. Bernard’s Group Homes Case Study
St. Bernard’s Group Homes is a Health Agency located in Fethard and was established in 1975. It provides care and support to children who have suffered abuse. The agency is 100% funded by the South Eastern Health Board. They have between 70 – 80 employees. The homes operate a 24-hour per day roster. There are 4 units in the main area and one located a short distance outside the town. This unit houses children with physical disabilities.
“Before the Time Management System was set up the home operated a manual roster system, for all employees. There are a number of variations of shifts and the organisation of these rosters was very time consuming and hence a lot of paperwork was generated which was not only tedious but prone to frequent errors”, according to Margaret Doocey.
“In each unit there is an overlap of 30 minutes for each shift as care staff pass on the relevant information to the next shift, therefore lateness was not a major problem”, explained Margaret. “The main areas of benefit are with part-time staff as they are paid hourly and it was very difficult to track all the relevant hours and rates of pay. This was difficult as payroll staff work from Monday to Friday only and therefore it was difficult to monitor weekend workers”.
Mitrefinch Time and Attendance was installed in February 2004. Andrew Meaney, the ‘Director of the Home’ appreciation of the system can be summed up in his comments “it is a terrific tool, and has made life much easier, significant savings in all areas are being generated with the tremendous efficiencies afforded by using the system”.
Each unit has a Manager, part of their responsibility is to check exceptions first thing on Monday morning. The reports are then sent to payroll, at which point they are processed by Margaret Doocey. As there are a large number of part-time workers, having the system, makes it so much easier to monitor all the organisations different shifts. As a twenty-four hour roster is in place with lots of different pay structures, managing this is much more efficient, according to Margaret.
The off-site unit (Avala) is also linked to the main system and the information is sent through to the main payroll section. It is hoped in the near future to allow staff access their holiday, sick-leave and hours worked records on each clocking terminal. This will further reduce the calls to administration and give employees instant information.
The introduction of Mitrefinch Time and Attendance was welcomed by all as a very useful and time saving tool, staff reacted very well as they now clock-in using the biometric reader i.e., finger recognition clocking. As Security and safety of all is paramount, each unit manager is responsible for the safety of the children in their care it is vital that only the correct staff be there at any time. Now, with biometric readers in place there is 100% peace of mind.