Streamline Staff Scheduling

Summary

In the long-term care industry, where scheduling mistakes are both costly and dangerous, Living Resources needed a solution to help them manage the growing complexity of scheduling their 600+ workforce.

With 60 locations across five counties in upstate New York, this world-class care facility also wanted to centralize their scheduling processes to help ensure compliance to state regulations. Managing overtime and improving communications between staff and managers were also key business initiatives for the organization.

By leveraging highly-configurable employee scheduling technology, Living Resources was able to shift from manual to automated scheduling processes, enabling a 47 percent reduction in overtime and improved workforce transparency.

Challenge

Living Resources provides care and support for individuals with developmental disabilities throughout upstate New York. Subject to state-wide regulations, Living Resources must meet staffing minimums that are individually set for each disability. This means they’re required to schedule qualified staff–in realtime–across all 60 locations, each with a unique client mix. In addition to the challenges of real-time scheduling, the complexity of workforce scheduling management was also being impacted by high turnover rates, growing overtime expenses, and last-minute scheduling changes.

Technology development manager, Jared Hammond, was tasked with workforce schedule management across all locations, spending nearly half of every day building and tweaking schedules in Excel. According to Hammond, “It was the wild west of the scheduling world.”

Every weekend, employee inboxes were flooded with emails from managers seeking to fill last-minute shift changes. Out of necessity, managers took on unfilled shifts, driving up labor costs with manager overtime. Hammond knew the wild west of scheduling couldn’t last; he needed a better strategy.

By mandating the use of Shiftboard throughout the organization, the cost of manager overtime has been cut almost in half.”

Jared Hammond
Technology Development Manager

Solution

Wanting a better scheduling solution, Hammond turned to Shiftboard. He focused on improving three key areas of his scheduling process: process automation, overtime reduction, and workforce transparency.

Process Automation Living Resources used to rely heavily on multiple spreadsheets to manually track employee availability, employee qualifications, shift assignments, time-off requests and many of the other scheduling influencers.

Now, the company has easy access to a central database of relevant employee data to ensure that only available and eligible employees are scheduled.

By implementing Shiftboard, Hammond eliminated his daily three-hour scheduling routine. He now has time to focus on new trainings, business analytics and other value-added projects intended to grow Living Resources and provide better care and support to those in need.

Overtime Reduction Previously, scheduling was filled with last minute scrambles. Staff inboxes were flooded with shift requests. Managers competed for staff, and those who lost were forced to work the unfilled shifts. Oftentimes, this resulted in costly manager overtime and employee burnout.

Now coupled with a dedicated scheduler, costly manager overtime has been reduced by 47 percent. Unlike before, managers now have a centralized management tool where they can take control of their schedule. More often than not, the employees opt-in to work overtime, leading to improved worker satisfaction and reduced labor expenses.

Workforce Transparency At Living Resources, all employee trainings need to be renewed every one to two years. The consequences for scheduling staff that doesn’t have the necessary training is dangerous and can lead to heavy penalties. Before Shiftboard, managers were tasked with manually tracking certifications and notifying workers when they were due for recertification.

Recurring trainings are now scheduled using Shiftboard, ensuring workers’ qualifications are up-to-date at all times. This process both reduces manager stress and mitigates any risk of scheduling underqualified labor.

Beyond training transparency, Shiftboard also established an audit trail for scheduling discrepancies. Partially funded by the state, Living Resources is constantly under a microscope. They use Shiftboard to institute a trustworthy audit trail. Now they can easily show compliance with state regulations or run reports if an incident should ever arise.