Care providers face a delicate balance as they juggle the provision of exceptional care while ensuring operational efficiency and attracting and retaining employees.
Many care providers are reliant on paper or spreadsheet-based processes to manage employee management tasks such as time and attendance, absence, scheduling and HR management. Workforce Management Software automates these processes, eliminating time-consuming manual administration and providing a single central system for complete employee management. The use of Workforce Management Software can transform employee management for the better offering benefits to service users, employees and the organisation as a whole.
Read on to discover 6 benefits workforce management software brings to care providers,
1. Reduced costs
Wage costs are the single largest expense category for most care providers so maintaining effective control of employee Time and Attendance is a significant determining factor for a care provider’s efficiency as well as its payroll costs.
A Workforce Management System allows care providers to automate the collection, manipulation and processing of employees’ Time and Attendance in one single system. This results in complete control and transparency in relation to payroll costs and enables care providers to easily identify and eliminate hidden labour costs, generating cost savings and ensuring their labour budget is being effectively utilised.
2. Improved payroll accuracy
A Workforce Management System helps you easily manage complex working patterns such as annualised hours, flexitime, part-time and shift working, while automatically assigning the correct pay rates no matter how many different pay rules are in place. This removes the need for manual calculations and significantly improves payroll accuracy eliminating under or over-payments
3. Optimized employee scheduling
Effective employee Scheduling/Rostering is the building block for the provision of excellent care. Many care providers still use spreadsheets or paper-based rosters to manage employee scheduling. This is time-consuming and results in a lack of oversight of employee time and attendance across the organisation, making it difficult to fill gaps created by absences or leave which can often result in the use of costly agency staff. Choosing a Workforce Management System with automated Employee Scheduling functionality frees up managers from the administrative burden of manual scheduling and allows schedules to be created weeks even months in advance.
4. Regulatory compliance
In most jurisdictions, employers now have a statutory duty to keep records and take reasonable steps to ensure that working hours comply with local Working Time Legislation. Ensuring legislative compliance can be both challenging and time-consuming but failure to prove compliance can result in significant fines, employee lawsuits and a damaged reputation.
A Workforce Management System takes the hard work out of compliance. To protect employers from inadvertent breaches of the legislation, rules can be built in to ensure employees can only be scheduled if their working time complies with legislation. With all working time and attendance records available in one central system, reports can easily be extracted to prove compliance, saving time, protecting the care provider from possible fines and contributing towards a healthy and safe working environment.
5. Enhanced resident care
Keeping up-to-date records of employee skills, training and certifications is not just nice to have, it’s critical for care homes with their specialised skill requirements. A Workforce Management System with skills tracking enables care homes to keep a record of each employee’s skills and certifications along with expiry dates where relevant ensuring this information is always up-to-date and that considerably less time is spent on its administration.
6. Increase employee satisfaction
One of the most useful features of a Workforce Management System is the Employee Self-Service App which can be accessed on a smartphone, desktop or laptop. Using the Self-Service App, employees can update their personal records to reflect changes such as bank details or addresses straight away – no emails and no waiting for HR to confirm receipt. Employee Self-Service gives employees more control over their working lives and contributes significantly towards improving employee empowerment and satisfaction.
In summary
With the increased demand for complex care, the need for visibility and control of operating costs and the requirement to ensure employee satisfaction, it’s never been more important to have effective workforce management in place for care homes. Using a Workforce Management system specifically designed for the challenges faced by care homes helps improve operational efficiency, improve employee satisfaction and support the provision of superior resident care.
To view a Demo of Softworks Workforce Management Software for Care Providers visit softworks.com or email hello@softworks.com
