A lot of health organisations implement WFM systems with a focus on payroll and compliance and add rostering as an afterthought, tacked on at the end. Even though compliance is important and ensuring employees are paid correctly drives a lot of the initial motivations for implementing a new system, a lot of the benefit to an organisation can be gained through the rostering. Organisations often miss out on these benefits purely because of their approach to implementation. Benefits like reduced agency and casual staff, reduced overtime, greater staff engagement and satisfaction, higher staff retention, meeting rostering demands and skills requirements. If the rostering requirements aren’t considered from the outset as part of the implementation, then those doing the rostering go back to their spreadsheets and the organisation miss out on all these benefits.
Having someone, preferably internal staff, that has worked at the coal face and can champion the system, can make all the difference to the benefits gained by the organisation.
I worked with two large public health authorities rolling out the same software. The first I got involved in after they had been trying to implement the system for nearly four years and although it was rolled out in some departments there was low take up and all rostering was entered only for timekeeping. Once we got an experienced RN who knew the staff and their challenges and could sell the benefits, the rest of the organization was rolled out and uptake of rostering in the system increase with benefits in reduced overtime and lower agency usage.
With the second health authority I was involved at the start of the project and we got a local rostering champion involved from the start. She knew the organization and was able to provide advice from the start so we could set the direction to drive improvement. One of the key changes was to implement a combination of local and central rostering which allowed staff flexibility to work across multiple departments and sites. This increased part-time employee hours, gave staff flexibility to choose their shifts and indicate availability increasing overall staff satisfaction and retention. The central rostering also freed up local staff to focus on patient outcomes rather than spending hours on the phone trying to fill shifts.
Another organization initially implemented timekeeping without considering rostering from the start. I came onto the project in a second phase where they then wanted to roll out the scheduling functionality of the system. Unfortunately, there were no rostering experts involved in the initial rollout of the system so they hadn’t considered these requirements. A lot of the system had to be reworked to change configuration to allow them to effectively use it for rostering. Even with this, it was still not possible, without completely rebuilding the system, to optimize it the way that it would have been if an experienced rostering user was consulted earlier. The rostering rollout took a lot more time and cost than it would have had a rostering champion been involved from the start.
If you are looking to implement a WFM system in an organization that has complex scheduling requirements, make sure you get an experienced rostering champion on the team from the start. They can look at the rostering challenges, collect local requirements and work with the team to ensure the system benefits are achieved and meet your organization’s needs.
Blog written by Dean Scott, Solution Consultant and Healthcare Lead
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Dean Scott
