HR AND PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
Paul Scandrett, Director of Healthcare at Allocate Software, explores issues with over-staffing and under-staffing shifts and ways to avoid this.
£20bn, the organisation now has to be ac- countable for every last inch of its budget. We must also take into consideration the pressures the NHS is under to improve the quality of patient care, meet clinical governance requirements and improve the working lives of staff. The quality of care relates directly to the workforce and, seeing as around 70% of NHS expenditure relates to its personnel, it’s clear that effective and efficient management of the workforce has never been more imperative.
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Yet, much of the workforce is still managed through frustrating and inefficient paper- based methods, or by running numerous excel spreadsheets; 50% of NHS trusts don’t have an electronic rostering solu- tion in place to properly monitor staff. This means that many shifts can be significantly over- or under-staffed and there’s little ac- countability for where the issues lie. Bank and agency staff are having to be called in to make up for under-staffed shifts at an additional cost that could be avoided if there were measures in place to ensure that all shifts are properly manned.
If the NHS is to meet the £20bn savings target by 2014, then these inefficiencies can by no means continue. For this reason, the deployment of electronic systems within Trusts needs to be encouraged. After all, the NHS could save millions each year by improving its approach to staffing.
This is where e-Rostering can make a big difference. In fact, Trusts who have de- ployed e-Rostering solutions have achieved significant financial savings while protect- ing services, and are also able to ensure that the workforce is operating safely, with wasteful processes streamlined and staff morale given a significant boost.
The e-Rostering approach has been proven – with a number of Trusts already deliver- ing significant financial savings. County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust for example has been using Allocate Software’s e-Rostering system, Health Roster, to manage its core nursing staff and have saved over £750,000 on nursing
46 | national health executive Jul/Aug 11
ith the NHS under pressure to generate efficiency savings of £15-
costs in one financial year. Following im- plementation, managers have been able to make more informed decisions on staffing requirements.
In addition, at North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust, the team removed agency and significantly reduced bank use, which has enabled them to achieve con- siderable savings on their nursing agency and overtime spend alone. This is directly attributed to the improvements made across the nurse workforce process from better demand and establishment control through to scheduling and approvals.
Allocate’s solution is also proven to improve the working lives of staff by removing time- ly back office processes. Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust used it to significantly
save time by streamlining processes and re- ducing the administrative burden involved in producing and maintaining their rosters, which in some cases used to take up to a whole week to pull together manually.
The NHS is being called upon to be less wasteful, and there are proven solutions to help Trusts reduce unnecessary staff- ing costs. With the Government having set such a high target of savings, Trusts need to embrace technology. By optimising the use of establishment staff, an e-Rostering solution can both cut back on costs and en- sure the right skill mix required to provide the required level of care is always on the wards at all times.
FOR MORE INFORMATION Visit
www.allocatesoftware.com
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