By MaryLee Herrmann

Staffing shortages.

You’ve heard that phrase more during the pandemic than during your whole life before. And in an attempt to fill huge gaps in your team, you’ve boosted wages and offered sign-on bonuses.

You’ve had to make it through.

But now it’s through. The pandemic is “officially” over. … Yet the shortage continues, and so does people’s expectation of higher wages, bonuses, flex scheduling, etc.

Staffing expenditures are through the roof. How are you supposed to sustain this?!

Get Efficient and Streamlined

Could tech be the answer?

Brett Landrum, founder and co-CEO of Procare HR (a Foresight partner), and Emily Timm, director of operations at Schedulay! (a Procare HR company), offered an unexpected solution during a conversation on Foresight TV with Steve Moran: Start with eliminating the inefficiency of manual scheduling. Use a strong scheduling software instead.

Doing this saves you time and helps you optimize your budget. Here are eight examples.

What to Expect From Good Staffing Software

1. Easily create steady, regular schedules. 

Using software allows you to easily create consistent schedules. You can assign team members to regular shifts, which gives them the ability to plan their lives outside of work and provides residents with comfort and familiarity.

2. Make sure you’re getting all those full-time hours.

You have full-time employees who are not working full-time hours. That’s a big waste. Having a program that does the calculations for you on a regular basis puts the info at your fingertips, allowing you to have the conversations with your employees to remedy the situation.

3. Easily track overtime.

On the other side of the coin, you have employees who are constantly pushing for overtime. You may not be able to do away with costly overtime entirely, but having the data conveniently in front of you helps you schedule accordingly instead of simply giving overtime to someone because the time needs to be covered and they are requesting the hours.

For more info about goals on lowering the amount of overtime, check out the show at 08:12.

4. Quickly find out where you’re overstaffed and understaffed.

Right now, do you know where your communities are overstaffed? Understaffed? Emily said most operators she talks to don’t know the answer. With software like this, you can clarify exactly how many people you need for particular times.

5. Save time on rescheduling.

“My daughter has a soccer game. It’s the regional championships, and I don’t want to miss it.” Understandable, but getting the shift filled expends valuable HR time. High-value scheduling software allows staff to be autonomous. Not only can they request time off, but they can also submit a fellow employee who has agreed to take on the shift. Your scheduler just needs to sign off on it.

6. Clarify when agencies are needed.

Instead of using agencies haphazardly as a Band-Aid, you’ll be able to utilize contract hiring in a more strategic way.

7. Boost retention.

Using technology that handles a lot of the workload frees up time to focus on the most important part: the people. More efforts can be put toward expressing gratitude, developing a positive environment, and inspiring them to continue doing a great job. They’ll want to stick around, and you’ll have fewer staffing issues!

8. Optimize labor costs.

When you’re struggling with finances, you’re told to create a budget and stick to it so you can see where your money is going and make choices based on that information. Same deal here. By using a staff scheduling system, you have all the data in front of you so you can be more strategic about your staffing.

To find out more about how technology-based labor management software can optimize your budget, check out Schedulay! here.