How to Manage 24-HR Shift Scheduling Without Losing Your Mind

February 14, 2020

If you’re in the healthcare industry, then you know it’s typically not a 9 to 5 job, as there are always going to be people who need care outside of the traditional work hours. If you’re a scheduler, then you know how challenging it can be to handle scheduling for 24-hour shifts, especially when dealing with absences and last minute call ins, scheduled time off requests, and making sure you have the right employees scheduled for the appropriate shifts. There are loads of employees and paperwork to keep track of, multiple departments and specialties to schedule, and a serious need to be able to do everything seamlessly and efficiently.

Tips on Creating 24-Hour Schedules

The easiest way to help your healthcare organization meet the challenges that come with managing 24-hour shifts is with the implementation of employee scheduling software.

Implement Healthcare Scheduling Software

Healthcare scheduling must take into account the availability of qualified staff, staff preferences, all while adhering to strict rules and guidelines. If you’re still using outdated, time-consuming scheduling methods such as pen and paper, or confusing spreadsheets, then it’s time to implement healthcare scheduling software. By doing so you’ll notice almost immediately an increase in shift efficiency, a reduction in labor costs, and a healthy and more satisfying healthcare staff work-life balance.

Provide Healthcare Scheduling Software

When you give your staff the ability to see their own schedules from any mobile device with internet access, you give them a sense of power as well as peace over their work and personal lives, which can be especially beneficial when working such long and difficult hours.

Benefits of Schedule360 Features for 24-Hour Schedules

Healthcare staff scheduling software is packed with powerful and useful features designed to make everything easier, including:

24/7 Access

Once employee scheduling software is in place, your healthcare staff won’t ever be left wondering when they need to be at work next, nor will they need to call the scheduling manager to get a copy of their schedule because they will have 24/7 access to their schedules from any mobile device with internet access. This gives your healthcare employees a sense of freedom and peace of mind, being able to view their schedule whenever they want, as well as being able to plan around it accordingly, and allowing them more balance over their work and personal life.

Shift Reminders

Ensure that your staff never misses shifts by having a reminder sent to their phone notifying them of an upcoming shift. You can’t do that with outdated methods such as pen and paper or manual spreadsheets.

Shift Swapping

Allow your employees the ability to swap shifts with other employees, all within a set of rules and guidelines set by management.

Credential Tracking

With employee scheduling software, licensure and skills are tracked and stored in employee profiles. Reminders can even be sent to employees when they are due for recertification prior to expiration. This way you can ensure that safe levels of staffing are occurring. You can also set controls to prevent employees from filling shifts that they don’t have the proper credentials or qualifications for.

Overtime Alerts

Schedule360 provides overtime alerts whenever an employee is approaching OT, whether the employee utilized the self-scheduling feature, or they were scheduled by admin. Alerts can be overridden by admin, and employees can even request to work OT, pending admin approval.

Efficient Messaging

Greatly improve all aspects of your communication with an efficient and convenient messaging system feature.

Managing a healthcare facility that requires 24-hour staffing is no easy task, but it can get much easier thanks to the help of employee scheduling software by Schedule360. Contact us today to schedule a customized demo of our award-winning software so you can see how our scheduling solutions might be the perfect answer to your scheduling dilemmas.