Acknowleding Public Safety Workers
Is your organization dealing with complex rules surrounding union collective bargaining rights?
We see public safety workers all the time, but many people don’t even realize the role they play until something like the current pandemic occurs. Those who work in public safety work in a wide range of fields (medical and health services, emergency management, law enforcement, EMTs, and more), and are focused on keeping communities safe, healthy, and well-supplied.
When you hear a siren, see agencies responding to a crisis, or watch first responders in action, you’re watching public safety professionals in action
Public Safety Industries:
- Energy & Utilities
- Communication Tech
- Finance
- Health
- Food
- Water
- Transportation
- Safety
- Government
- Manufacturing
In order to support these workers, we need to keep our critical infrastructure running properly. Critical infrastructure is the stuff that society needs to function and is prioritized appropriately. It goes without saying that the people in these fields are classified as essential workers, and it regularly falls to them to be in the thick of things during health emergencies like the current pandemic. There are differences in the way essential services are categorized depending on where you are, so we don’t delve into that too deeply here.
Taking Public Safety Seriously
Does your scheduling involve rotations at different locations, different times or variable tasks?
Governments, businesses, and entire economies are shifting and reconfiguring themselves to cope with the sudden changes. This has put millions out of work, and left millions continuing to work with the risk of serious illness. It’s a challenging situation that is pushing discussions of public safety to the forefront, and is expected to be of serious concern for some time.
North America is currently one of the hardest hit places for confirmed COVID-19 infections. As of the beginning of May, 2020, the USA has had over 1.1 million confirmed cases — that’s one-third of the global total!
Do you need to ensure a certain level of experience is held by someone on site?
Different states have responded in different ways: issuing shelter in place orders, closing down nonessential businesses, and taking services online where possible. And while discussions of reopening states and lifting restrictions keep occurring, virtually all health agencies believe it’s unrealistic to expect anything to go back to ‘normal’ in 2020.
Now is the time for businesses and organizations to adapt & automate.
The current health crisis is putting scheduling practices to the test, and most software falls short. Celayix can guarantee a solution that is customized to your needs and can handle any scale of operation. Scheduling is a notoriously challenging task at the best of times, and smaller companies with fewer than 50 employees may be able to get away with using manual options and doing things by hand. But companies and organizations with hundreds or thousands of employees absolutely need to automate scheduling processes if they haven’t already.
With how contagious COVID-19 is, it’s inevitable that people working in public safety will be needing more sick time as a result. When that happens, manual schedulers can’t provide any of the following:
- Instant notifications for available staff and management
- Rules-based scheduling that accounts for variables like relevant skills, staff availability, infection status, or overtime concerns
- Shift bidding which lets staff claim open shifts without schedulers needing to even lift a finger
And the more challenges crop up, the more difficult everyday operations become for schedulers. Unless they learn to adapt by using scheduling and workforce automation.
Understaffing, Overstaffing, Overtime & Sick Leave
There’s a common scenario: workers quit or are let go, and instead of filling their roles the business instead tries to make do with existing staff. This causes overtime to occur, which causes productivity to drop, which negatively affects morale. And in the end, the extra costs outweigh onboarding and hiring costs of finding new staff.
Believe it or not, understaffing often costs an organization more than slightly overstaffing. There are numerous reasons why, including burnout, turnover, loss of productivity, overtime, and others. Fundamentally, what’s most important is to keep workers happy, healthy, and safe. Maintaining appropriate staff levels while ensuring the correct qualifications and requirements are all met can’t be done in a complex work environment without automation. This is the only surefire way to keep morale high, reduce burnout, keep workers safe, and save money by reducing or eliminating overtime
It’s never too late to do things right.
During a challenging time, it’s more important than ever to ensure workers do not have added stress on their plates – and that includes management. We’re aware that the current situation may make it seem more daunting to take on a new system, and we’re sensitive to that. Our customer support team is renowned for its responsiveness and attentiveness. We’re available 24/7 and are happy to help users get the most out of our software.
Protecting our public safety workers – our EMTs, our nurses and doctors, our police officers, and others – is one of the most important things we can do. If you’re in need of a complete, best-of-breed workforce management solution that takes care of every facet of your organization, look no further. We’ll be happy to walk you through all the ways in which we can lighten your load and make the current situation more bearable — just get in touch. Thank you for the work that you do and for keeping us safe!
