FM & TECHNOLOGY
to be doing it. The client isn’t interested in supervisors managing pay in the background because the client wants to make sure the wards are being cleaned and the food is being served on time and the food is hot enough. A lot of it is therefore about visibility,” said Prince.
“In recent years, the role of
management solutions has witnessed a paradigm shift from the administrative to the analytical; there is now a
much greater focus on gathering and analysing data to provide
strategic insight into the strengths (and weaknesses) of the workforce.”
Unnecessary overtime and booking staff in for key tasks at the weekend when more expensive rates are applied was eating into NHS budget. With hospitals able to levy fines ranging from £250 for not cleaning a staircase to £3,000 for not providing evidence of consistent staffing levels, it was essential Sodexo found a solution.
On our guided tour of the Trust, Tomorrow’s FM gets a demonstration of the newly installed scheduling software from one of the supervisors in charge of portering at the hospital. A simple layout on screen shows all the porters
24 | TOMORROW’S FM
working across the Trust that day. The supervisor is able to allocate an employee to a set task; this sends an alert to the employee’s two-way radio which they can then respond to, to confirm whether or not they can complete the allocated task.
The key to maximising productivity is gaining a deep knowledge of how people are being deployed, their roles in the organisation and whether they are full-time, part-time, temporary or shift workers. Flexible labour scheduling is one way of impacting productivity positively by significantly boosting morale.
Prince explained: “When our employees feel their work is more organised and efficient, they feel much better about their jobs – it’s a very simple but important correlation. Employees that want to work more hours are now more visible, and while we can only schedule six weeks ahead of time, people’s hours are more predictable and known earlier.”
Since the introduction of labour scheduling the service provider has saved around three hours per supervisor per week. “With 25-30 managers dealing with 1,000 staff, a conservative estimate is that two full days of administration is being saved per week,” noted Prince enthusiastically. Sodexo is also seeing dramatic improvements in shift accuracy, with exceptions falling from 25-30% to just 2-4%.
Beyond the transition Implementing Kronos’ software wasn’t solely for the Manchester-based hospitals, for Sodexo it was a healthcare-wide project that took place over a two-year
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