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In theory, it’s quite simple to sit down with an Excel spreadsheet and plan rotas a couple of weeks in advance. You’ll no doubt hit some stumbling blocks with annual leave and sickness thrown in the mix, but for a week or two – you should be just fine. However, over time, this manual effort will leave your staff feeling less engaged and could ...

You’ll have heard the adage; proper planning prevents poor performance, and it’s never truer than in the world of staff management. In this post, we’ll run through the real-life cost of poor planning and how organisations who invest in staff scheduling software are able to take back control and benefit from better financial outcomes. Manual ...

There has been so much change to working arrangements over the last 18 months and it looks like in many cases, things may have changed for the long term. Hybrid working – splitting your time between the office and home – may become the norm in many organisations in future including roles which were once considered unsuitable for homeworking. Many ...

Homewell Practice are a Havant-based GP practice. Their aims are to prevent ill health, improve the wellbeing of patients, work with local commissioning groups and other integrated health teams to provide services that improve local health outcomes and reduce admissions to secondary care.   The challenge Historically, rota management at ...

Even before COVID-19 hit, the NHS was experiencing a staffing crisis and the pandemic has only emphasised this and highlighted what a huge strain our NHS staff work under.  It was reported earlier this year that there is a shortage of 84,000 staff with 38,000 of these vacancies being for nurses and 2500 for GPs.  It shouldn’t really come as a ...

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 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 ...