Home healthcare organizations have an important job of delivering excellent care right in the patient’s home. As with many businesses, patient care and operations can be affected by common problems such as:
- A time-consuming manual or outdated staff scheduling process
- Unclear or missed communication between management and staff
- Regulatory non-compliance
- Inadequate consideration about the health, safety, and happiness of employees and clients
Ignoring these problems can be grave from a business stance and even derail some home healthcare organizations quickly. The mobile nature of the home healthcare workforce causes difficulty in mitigating the problems above. Implementing workforce management software makes it easier to keep track of your workforce and solve organization problems. So, here are 5 ways workforce management software can add alue to your home healthcare organization.
Simplified Scheduling
Scheduling staff is often an afterthought as it seems to be a simple process. But, when scheduling home healthcare staff, there are many factors to consider including:
- Number of employees, availability, and number of working hours
- Skills and qualifications
- Rules and regulations
- Patient needs and preferences
- Location of patients and employees
Depending on the size of your organization, the scheduler can easily spend many hours a week scheduling staff on a spreadsheet. Secondly, an inefficient scheduling process can increase your labor costs. This affects the overall efficiency and profitability of the home health organizatin.
With workforce management software, a robust scheduling function can help simplify scheduling. Scheduling software makes it easy to schedule employees in a cost-effective way. You can see schedules at a glance, create schedule templates, and keep track of labor costs all in one place. As a result of the time and resources saved, you can focus on other areas of improvement and growth.
Clear Communication
Communication, simply put, is the act of transferring information from one person or group to another. Effective communication is a vital part of any home healthcare organization, big or small. Poor communication will almost always have a detrimental effect on your organization. A breakdown in communication can lead to unhappy employees, poor service for clients, and loss of revenue. When utilizing workforce management software, the communication component is vital. Being able to instantly communicate to staff is a huge advantage over other organizations that don’t implement this system. With the ability to automate most shift change notifications/updates, time is saved and clarity and cohesiveness is maintained between staff and management.
Empowered Employees
Scheduling with workforce management software can also give more autonomy to employees over their schedules. Employee availability is recorded in the system and shifts that fall within that will be assigned. Software like Celayix also have features like self-scheduling and shift bidding that allows employees to choose their own shifts based on shifts that are posted.
These features can lead to better work-life balance for employees which has a number of benefits:
- Increase in employee satisfaction and motivation
- Reduced employee burnout
- Improved employee retention
- Higher quality service in employees
Not to mention, self-scheduling and shift bidding further reduce time for schedulers. All they have to do is create the shifts that are needed for patients, and employees simply fill themselves in.
Guaranteed Compliance
Remaining compliant with regulations is a constant concern for home healthcare organizations. With powerful workforce management software, you can easily filter employees by qualifications, skills, seniority, and any other pre-defined business rules. This ensures that no patient is underserved or any employee is underqualified for a shift.
In addition, if your organization needs to comply with electronic visit verification (EVV), workforce management software like ours helps you stay compliant.
Shift Affirmations
At Celayix, we know that employee safety is at your utmost concern, especially with regard to the coronavirus pandemic. With our new feature: “shift affirmation”, management can ensure employees agree with company guidelines before starting their shift. This means organizations can keep their employees in accordance with the latest company health and safety recommendations. This can be particularly important in current times, where COVID-19 is an ever-present concern. When an employee signs into their shift, a pop-up will appear in the employee’s app. Then, it will request them to acknowledge the information shown before the employee signs in. Whether that’s the latest health and safety guidelines, or acknowledgment of a lack of symptoms, it’s easy to keep your staff informed and safe with shift affirmation.
A workforce management software doesn’t just remove administrative burdens for home healthcare organizations. Above all, it provides clarity and focus to companies looking to grow without sacrificing employee quality or client service levels.
At Celayix, we help home healthcare companies across North America transform their business every day. So, if you’d like to find out more on how to improve your home healthcare organization’s workforce management, schedule a demo with one of our experts today, or get in touch with us directly.
