Deep Dive into Assessing Need
In Part 2 of our series, we discussed common pitfalls and mistakes to avoid when setting up your scheduling organization. Now, let’s take a closer look at the first foundational step: Assessing Needs. This is critical in ensuring that your scheduling service is built on a solid foundation, and it plays a key role in supporting the overall success of your healthcare organization’s workforce management strategy.
Step #1: Assess Needs – Laying the Groundwork for Success
Assessing the scheduling needs of your organization is the first and perhaps most important step in building a reliable and effective staff scheduling service. At its core, this assessment allows you to align your scheduling processes with the actual demands of your healthcare environment, ensuring that the system you design is tailored to the unique needs of your organization. This step can help you prioritize your roadmap to improve the staff scheduling ecosystem.
5 Key Considerations for Assessing Needs
When assessing your organization’s scheduling requirements, it’s important to consider the following factors and to ask yourself some challenging questions:
- Staffing Levels: Understanding the full scope of your staffing needs, including the number of employees, full-time vs. part-time ratios, and any seasonal fluctuations in demand. Is it possible that staff scheduling professionals could find a way to optimize and improve utilization through our current schedules? Or, are unit managers expert in their schedule build approach?
- Shift Requirements: Different departments have varying shift patterns, shift length, FT/PT mix, —some may require consistent 24/7 coverage, while others may follow more random schedule baselines. Assessing these needs in advance ensures that every unit is covered adequately. Ask yourself, do similar/sister units in my organization have similar baselines?
- Special Considerations: Are there specific units or teams that require specialized scheduling? For example, do certain teams operate under collective bargaining agreements, or do some roles require special certifications that limit who can fill a shift? In the current scheduling environment is it 100% clear which special skills are needed on each shift?
- Workforce Distribution: Does your organization have multiple locations or satellite clinics that need staffing? If so, determining how best to manage scheduling across locations is critical. Are the current staff scheduling processes and practices consistent and standardized, delivering equity amongst all staff?
- Operational Peaks: Identifying periods of higher patient volumes or increased staffing demands (e.g., flu season or other critical care needs) will help ensure your scheduling process is agile enough to respond to changing conditions. Do we have predictable surge events mapped out? If so, have we already pre-scheduled additional staff?
How Workforce Edge Can Help in Assessing Needs
At Workforce Edge, we understand that the complexity of staffing in healthcare is unlike any other industry. That’s why our team of experts can work with you to conduct a thorough assessment of your scheduling needs.
Our process includes:
- Data-Driven Analysis: We leverage advanced analytics to assess workforce demands, identify trends, and predict future staffing requirements based on historical data and operational needs.
- Customized Solutions: Every healthcare organization is different, and so are its scheduling needs. We customize our assessment to fit your organization’s size, scope, and operational complexity, ensuring that the tools and processes we recommend are a perfect match for your environment.
- Stakeholder Engagement: A key element of our approach is working closely with department heads, unit managers, and frontline staff to ensure that all perspectives are considered during the needs assessment phase. This ensures buy-in from key stakeholders and helps avoid issues down the line.
By starting with a comprehensive assessment, Workforce Edge helps your organization lay the foundation for a scheduling service that meets both current and future needs.
Looking Ahead: Designing Staff Schedules
In Part 4, we’ll discuss designing your staff scheduling function, focusing on designs that balance operational needs with employee satisfaction and regulatory compliance. These steps build on the foundational work of assessing your needs and avoiding common pitfalls to create a robust, reliable scheduling service that adapts to the complexities of healthcare environments.