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When you’re managing a wide variety of staff who all work different hours and shift patterns, rota planning can be hugely time-consuming and difficult. Particularly within the health and care sectors, your rota needs to be fully staffed to ensure that you can provide the best possible care available and that your business is running as smoothly ...

If the pandemic has taught us anything in the healthcare sector it's that ‘online’ systems and processes, including e-rostering, have been instrumental in redeploying staff, reporting absences and managing working hours.  Whenever we’re exhibiting our staff planning software at events, we often hear healthcare professionals say the same thing ...

Some new research out this month (15 April 2021) by the Living Wage Foundation, says that almost 40% of shift workers are given less than a week’s notice of their working hours, with a small percentage getting less than a day’s notice. They also point out that it seems to be more prevalent with low paid workers on variable hours, which presents ...

With the ongoing pandemic and travel off the cards for the last 12 months, there are flickers of hope that we might be able to get away in the UK at least over the summer.  Managers may be bracing themselves for a deluge of requests for time off in the coming weeks and requests to carry over unused annual leave.  Are you confident you can ...

It is difficult to quantify the huge strain the healthcare sector has felt this year from a staffing point of view – staff shortages; higher demand; high staff sickness rates and social-distancing regulations and there are concerns around how staff on the frontline will cope after the pandemic has passed – we will have an over-worked and stressed ...

Under normal circumstances, making a vaccine can take between 10 and 15 years due to the complexity of vaccine development.  However, as the global pandemic took hold in the Spring 2020, time was a luxury the world could not afford.  This “landing on the moon moment,” (*Dr. Yager) has ushered in a new era of vaccine research and within 11 months ...

For most of us 2020 will be a year to forget, but in our final blog of the year, we wanted to remember the good news and the heart-warming stories that have filled us with joy and prompted many of us to support the NHS in ways never seen before.    Here are our top picks, reasons to be grateful and heart-warming stories showing how we all ...

Under current plans, the whole of the adult population will have had the Covid vaccination (2 doses) by the end of April 2021. The numbers are huge! And obviously depends on when the various vaccines are cleared by the MHRA for use. - 33.9m to be done at community mass vaccination sites operated by primary care; - 27.7m at large scale mass ...

Staff are an organisations’ most valuable asset and when the chips are down, it is even more important to ensure they are happy and motivated.  Things are tough at the moment for a lot of people – cancelled holidays, further lockdowns and rumours of a digital Christmas.  As the NHS continues to tackle the pandemic, it would seem that now is a ...

There has been a lot of talk about digital transformation in the NHS in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and what huge strides have been made in a short space of time.   We have also seen a huge shift taking place in working patterns across a whole range of sectors. The NHS however, still seems to have an underdeveloped and inconsistent ...

The power of data One of the biggest challenges facing the NHS is data.  The NHS has lots of it but has historically not been great at using it.  Yet it is a challenge that must be overcome as data is critical to the healthcare system in providing safer and more effective care; overcoming operational issues; understanding disease and improving ...

Whilst we don’t want to start a political debate, we couldn’t help but notice a bit of a Twitter furore around last month’s vote in parliament – new clause 17 – an amendment to the post-Brexit trade deal. The clause was intended to protect the NHS from any form of control from outside the UK, but was voted down by MPs, leading to some saying it ...