Reduce Labor Costs by Implementing Employee Scheduling Software

December 10, 2019

Reduce Labor Costs by Implementing Employee Scheduling Software

Unless you happen to be a skilled mathematician, creating and revising an employee shift schedule that works well for everyone can be a complicated and time-consuming process. Regardless of the size of the company, manual scheduling often results in a loss of time and resources. This can be especially troublesome if you’re a healthcare organization.

Maintaining proper staffing levels at all times is important to any company, but in healthcare it is crucial. Ensuring the quality of patient care and meeting safety standards is a demanding job in itself. Keeping optimal staffing levels while not over-working your staff can seem downright impossible at times. Without optimizing and organizing your staff, they can quickly become overwhelmed, and your budget will also suffer due to costly overtime hours.

One cost effective solution is implementing an online employee scheduling software. You may be wondering how something so simple could have such an impact on your bottom line. Consider the following benefits:

Reduces Time Spent on Scheduling

Online employee scheduling software dramatically reduces time spent on scheduling as well as addresses all of the major scheduling conflicts and issues by allowing employees to view open shifts online, 24/7, within their respective qualifications, and self-schedule into open shifts. Management can also dispatch any last-minute open shifts to all qualified and available employees, eliminating the cumbersome method of going down a phone list leaving voicemails or texts and hoping for the best.

Online scheduling software can also quickly allow management to fill last-minute open shifts through floating staff already scheduled versus having to fill last-minute scheduling needs by agency staff which charge a premium price for their services. Additionally, an online scheduling system can provide your facility the ability to build and manage a float pool, allowing another method of optimizable resources to manage open shifts.

Prior to implementing employee scheduling software by Schedule360, Piedmont Walton Hospital struggled to manage five different units using the old-fashioned pen and paper scheduling method. Sharon Queen, CNO of Piedmont said, “We have always used self-scheduling. We were dependent on the nurse to put her time in, in a timely manner. It was very laborious trying to handle five different units with paper scheduling. We also staffed for about 75% of our beds, our average census, and we were supplementing that with a lot of agency use.”

Thanks to online scheduling software, Piedmont is able to take the money they once spent on agency labor and put it towards incentives for their employees.

Minimizes Availability Conflicts and Reduces Overtime Hours

Thanks to rule based online self-scheduling software, many common scheduling conflicts and pitfalls are greatly reduced, or even eliminated. Online scheduling software can track availability, time-off requests, and even shift swaps. Managers are alerted in real time whenever an employee calls off for a shift, giving them the power and ability to make prompt scheduling decisions.

Overtime alerts are also built into the system, allowing managers to see at a glance those who still need hours within a pay period and those who are close to overtime thresholds. This also allows for overtime hours to be more evenly distributed, as well as providing easy tracking of overtime spending, so any issues can be addressed before they become a problem.

Improves Workplace Morale

When employees have some control of their schedules they tend to feel happier in their personal and professional lives. Online employee scheduling software creates many workplace morale boosters, as it helps reduce nurse burnout and fatigue by allowing nurses to oversee their schedules in advance. It gives them ample time to request any needed time-off, as well as allowing 24/7 mobile access, which also helps to reduce stress by keeping them informed of their schedule and any changes to it.

Schedule360 does more than just scheduling tasks, it allows for comprehensive workforce management. Organize and oversee your staffing process with the most configurable scheduling software on the market. We understand the unique scheduling and staffing management tasks you face every day. Contact us for a customized demo of our software to see just how streamlined your staffing processes can become.