Staff Scheduling Success Starts With Keeping Your Promises

If you have frequently recurring holes in your staff scheduling, your first inclination might be to hire more people. That’s not necessarily the wrong move, but jumping into hiring might be premature if you haven’t taken steps to ensure that you are fully utilizing your entire staff.

Effective staff utilization is more science than art. And when left to rushed, last-minute decisions, staff utilization will fall short of the efficiency necessary to reduce or even eliminate the need for new hiring.

The basis of proper staff utilization is the work expectation of your staff members compared to that of your organization. Often I hear full-time staff members are routinely working only 30 hours per week when most organizations define a full-time staff member to work 36 to 40 hours per week. Conversely, I also hear about part-time staff members working more hours than initially expected.

In either case someone is not living up to their end of the bargain and the ramifications are significant and could lead to a myriad of issues including:

• Mistrust
• Perception of unequal treatment
• Working short
• Overtime or agency usage
• Unnecessary cost of employee’s benefits

The best way to combat these issues is to put a non-biased process in place to measure how well your organization and your employees are fulfilling their obligations. Here are 4 steps to get started.

1. Classify Your Staff               

The first step is to identify your full-time, part-time and per-diem staff. This should be easy, and it is critically important as the Affordable Care Act ramifications could be significant. Providers must know when part-time staff are consistently working over the 30 hour per week/130 hour per month thresholds. This information will allow long-term care and senior living providers to either reduce those staff members' hours to avoid penalty or make those staff members full-time and provide access to benefits.

2. Set Hours Expectations With Each Staff Member

This should be another layup for most providers - at least for full-time staff. Typically, full-time staff members have clear expectations when hired to work a set number of hours per week (commonly 36 or 40), while part-time workers hours may be variable as the work expectations are often customized to each individual. Document what was initially agreed to when employees were hired and confirm with your staff to make sure everyone is on the same page. Chances are you might find a couple workers that could use more shifts and be prioritized when they become available. As for your per-diem staff, consider setting a policy that outlines the number of shifts they work and what days they would be responsible to cover if needed.

Now that you have a clear picture of the expectations throughout your workforce, compare it to your budgeted hppd (hours per patient day) at this point, you will begin to understand if you need to hire more staff.

3. Schedule & Measure

Once you agree with staff members on the shared expectations of hours to be worked, it’s time deliver on your promises and schedule them accordingly. This is a critical promise for an organization to keep. This is their livelihood so any fluctuations or inconsistency in a team member's schedule can have a direct impact on their personal financial situation and their happiness with your organization.

Also, after you have locked in your schedule, you must continually measure the actual hours worked against the expected hours. 

4. Manage Consistently

Once you have the numbers at your disposal, it is critical to hold your team accountable if targets aren’t being hit. This could be a scheduling issue or an employee issue so it is important to determine the circumstance for each employee and identify if there are any trends. Is the scheduler routinely under assigning a staff member? Is the scheduler consistently giving additional shifts to a staff member because they know they will work? Is an employee routinely calling off?

It's critical to understand those circumstances and address them. This will help build a culture of equality and accountability that your employees will respect.

In summary, staff scheduling success starts when you take the time to analyze how well you are working for your staff and how well your staff is working for you. It’s an important process that can improve staff satisfaction, reduce unnecessary hiring and upgrade your credibility.