The healthcare sector has its own unique set of demands. This includes the need for quality care and service. Of course, at the heart of this is your staff. If you don’t have adequate staff, it’s hard to deliver exceptional service. This requires proper scheduling.
With additional shifts, departments, and more employees, there are additional scheduling challenges. Creating an efficient schedule can be a complete nightmare for some supervisors.
But, there’s a way to simplify your scheduling.
Using a healthcare rostering system, you can make sure that your shifts are covered – while also avoiding overtime and staying within your budget. Despite the advantages that this brings, a lot of organisations still rely on manual scheduling. You may belong to this category. If you still use pen and paper to write out a schedule or build a schedule on a spreadsheet, you’re missing out on benefits that could improve the quality of care you deliver to patients.
Find out why you should think about switching to a healthcare rostering system. But, first, explore some of the reasons why manual scheduling should be a thing of the past.
The Disadvantages of Manual Roster Planning
In most healthcare settings, you have a rotating shift of employees. When an employee calls off, you need to rush to find a replacement. This is needed to continue offering quality care. There are typically two options for covering the shift. This can apply to both planned and unplanned absences. You can either get an employee that’s already working to extend their shift or you can attempt to find a replacement.
There are drawbacks to both. When an employee works a long shift, their productivity decreases. Also, they could end up with overtime pay. This increases payroll costs, even though the employee is covering a shift. Finding a replacement can also be less than ideal. If a supervisor takes time out of his or her day to go through a list of employees, examine their availability, and look at their pay rates and hours already worked, you’ve got an efficient system.
The Advantages of Automated Rostering
If those problems sound like hassles that you’ve had to deal with before, then you’ll enjoy the advantages provided by a healthcare rostering system. You can reduce administrative costs, schedule employees based on their skill set, boost morale, increase efficiency, and provide a better quality of care.
Reduce Your Administrative Costs
When it comes to the use of new software or equipment, every organisation wants to know the costs involved. With rostering software, you’ll find that you can reduce your administrative costs.
Your supervisors or HR team doesn’t need to spend as much time creating schedules, you can stick to your payroll budget, and you’ll simplify the way you handle shift requests. This helps cut down on administrative costs and time spent on admin tasks.
Automated Scheduling Based on Skillset
Using an automated rostering system, supervisors can fill shifts based on skill set. For example, if you require a specific number of nurses with a certain qualification on each shift, the rostering software can account for this detail.
You can categorise employees based on their skill sets, pay rates, availability, and any other factors that apply to your workplace setting.
This streamlines the entire process of creating a complex schedule. The detailed software can handle all the complexities of your schedule. It no longer becomes a chore to build a roster for multiple shifts and hundreds of employees.
Boost Your Employee Morale
Many businesses find that automated rostering can boost employee morale. A portion of this benefit is due to the ease of scheduling requests. Employees can enter their own availability and enter shift requests through the system. Handling these requests and availability changes through the system can reduce the demand on your HR team or supervisors.
Improve Efficiency and Productivity
At the same time, you’ll notice improved efficiency and productivity. This applies to your daily operations and the efficiency of your scheduling.
By using the pre-set employee details discussed, you can make sure that every schedule is optimised. You can determine the needs of each shift, schedule the right employees, and easily deal with unplanned and planned absences.
Provide Better Quality of Care
All the benefits described add up to one major advantage – you can provide a better quality of care to your patients. Remember, the key to offering quality care is being able to keep your shifts properly covered. You need an effective solution for ensuring you have proper coverage.
The improved morale, productivity, and ease of scheduling allow your staff to focus on what matters – the patients. They can spend less time handling scheduling requests, finding replacements, and dealing with other scheduling hassles.
Final Thoughts on Choosing a Healthcare Rostering System
Rostering solutions are available for any industry. But, the healthcare sector has unique challenges. Complex scheduling needs can be simplified with the help of the right software. If you’re tired of dealing with the challenges of scheduling, the rostering software could be the answer that you’ve been waiting for.
