intelligent

Take the NHS for example , which must meet specific staffing levels 24 hours a day for each department and has traditionally relied on agency workers to ensure sufficient staffing numbers . But infilling shifts with agency workers is expensive . They found a solution in working alongside agencies and introducing a capped fee to ensure the costs are managed , while also driving the money saved back into building a bank of staff for each healthcare location to dip into . This allows the NHS to save money while also allowing the bank staff the same flexibilities as if they were working for an agency .

Dominic Raymont , National Workforce Deployment Lead , has led the NHS ’ s temporary staffing programme which has reduced agency cost by £ 1.2 billion ( a third ) in three years . Dominic recently joined me on my podcast , Shifts Happen , and explained how the NHS has used this model to reduce money and increase engagement .

He said : “ Agencies are really good at providing short-term staff into specialist roles and that ’ s really where we want to be working with the agencies . Where we buy-in lots and lots of staff from agencies , that is an area where some of them could be procured through banks which then gives that volume of staff available to the trusts and makes them less reliant on agency staff .”

The NHS has adopted this notion of using a bank of staff on its own payroll for the vaccine roll-out in the UK , where volunteers and staff members , including cleaners , security and other ancillary roles , needed to be co-ordinated and mobilised across various locations , all while considering the fluctuating supplies of the various vaccines themselves . This has proved challenging for many NHS locations , yet with intelligent shift matching software , some Primary Care Networks have found technology has saved days of management time allocating shifts .

The future of workforce management software

For organisations and their people to reap the rewards of flexible working , it ’ s important to note that filling shifts is more than a tick box exercise . Historically workforce management systems – especially in shift-based industries – are essentially repositories of people and information about their working lives . Encompassing separate modules , like HR admin , time and attendance and absence management , these systems are great at collecting information , doing some clever analysis and presenting it to administrators .

These insights may make sense in a static staffing world in which the same people are doing the same shifts week-in week-out . But we now live in a dynamic staffing world in which shift patterns are changing weekly , if not daily , and the people filling them are also in flux . In this environment , the point should be not to provide charts but to actually fill shifts with maximum speed and efficiency . And this need is set to grow , given the increasing business and staff appetite for a more dynamic way of working .

Dynamic staffing

Shift management systems must be fit for purpose within a dynamic staffing environment . The future of workforce management software is with shift filling at its core – just as Amazon revolutionised supply chain in the early 2000s . Amazon renamed its warehouses fulfilment centres . Why ? The purpose of these centres was not to store stock but to fill customer orders with maximum speed and efficiency . Its supply chain algorithms became the company ’ s secret weapon , the driving force behind and in response to increased customer appetite for the next-day / same-day delivery that has grown exponentially , particularly during the pandemic .

The future is likely to see many more staff and businesses embrace flexible working solutions . It can be the difference between building an engaged and motivated team or having to consistently outsource or recruit to cover staffing needs . The ability to efficiently mobilise staff as and when workload fluctuates has the win-win opportunities of reducing costs for business and improving work / life balance for staff . Just as noone today imagines a warehouse without fulfilment at its core , in future no-one will imagine a workforce system without dynamic shift filling at its core . �

Scott Erwin , CEO and Founder of HireHand

SHIFT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS MUST BE FIT FOR PURPOSE WITHIN A DYNAMIC STAFFING ENVIRONMENT .