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The best of times: scheduling-optimization software can produce the best schedules for both employees and the business, but be sure to include the human element
By mobile | October 5, 2007
When the latest employee scheduling software is working at its best, it combines skills, salaries, individual preferences, regulatory demands, human resource guidelines and other data into a complex algorithm to strike an optimal balance between organizational efficiency and employee satisfaction.
When the software falls short, it’s almost always because its users failed to factor the human variable into the equation.
“If you neglect the human element of these systems, you’re going to lose” their effectiveness, says Georgian Hernandez, workforce management administrator for USANA Health Sciences, a global health products manufacturer based in Salt Lake City.
Jack Fulbright, vice president of human resources for Northeast Georgia Medical Center and Health System in Gainesville, Ga., credits the scheduling software implemented a year ago with reducing turnover costs, overtime and the use of temporary nurses from outside staffing agencies. The Kronos scheduling software helps in managing 2,500 nurses, respiratory therapists and support staff members at the medical center.
“At a high level, the [scheduling] system helps us make sure that our workforce is being used properly,” Fulbright says. “The system helps us achieve efficiencies and quality from an organizational standpoint, and it also helps us deliver what’s best for our employees, which helps us strengthen our retention.”
Jack Fulbright, vice president of human resources for Northeast Georgia Medical Center and Health System in Gainesville, Ga., credits the scheduling software implemented a year ago with reducing turnover costs, overtime and the use of temporary nurses from outside staffing agencies. The Kronos scheduling software helps in managing 2,500 nurses, respiratory therapists and support staff members at the medical center.
“At a high level, the [scheduling] system helps us make sure that our workforce is being used properly,” Fulbright says. “The system helps us achieve efficiencies and quality from an organizational standpoint, and it also helps us deliver what’s best for our employees, which helps us strengthen our retention.”
Finally, more precise scheduling outputs, such as alerts on necessary employee certifications or a labor forecast’s impact on budgets, equip corporate HR functions with greater visibility, and more precise and actionable information.
Richard Coleman laid out the fundamentals of sound scheduling tactics a dozen years ago in his book The Twenty-Four Hour Business: Maximizing Productivity Through Round-The-Clock Operations (AMACOM, 1995). Coleman identified three factors that efficient, effective scheduling systems need to consider: business needs, health and safety, and employee preferences.
The timing of Coleman’s book was ideal. Scheduling systems of varying sophistication (think pencil and paper, and magnet boards) have existed since the advent of the assembly line, but software-based scheduling advanced tremendously in the middle and late 1990s in call centers because of the automated call distributor (ACD). The little black box integrates with computerized telephone systems and helps traffic incoming calls to available agents. ACDs also collect data–such as the average time a caller waits to be connected to a service representative, average call time, number of calls handled by an agent in a given period and so on–that mathematicians use to develop algorithms that identify optimal staffing levels for specific work shifts.
The more data an ACD collects, the more precise and more efficient the schedule can become, at least in theory. In practice, many early implementations of scheduling software were too efficient, scheduling a bare minimum of employees to take nonstop calls.
Topics: Telephone Systems |
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