Everything You Need to Know About Healthcare Staff Scheduling Software

A flexible scheduling solution takes on all related complexities that nurses face in order to optimize the workforce. You don’t want scheduling software that can just scale, but also can tolerate all scheduling-related preferences, rotations, and last-minute updates. The shift of a healthcare professional is rarely static,in fact it changes constantly from shift to shift.

Being a healthcare professional naturally means you’re mobile and on your feet all the time. A healthcare staff scheduling software that is only accessible by desktop or is an in-house logging system, just won’t be efficient.

Mobile functionality is a better way to engage a distributed workforce and improve communications, making it a crucial feature that can empower your staff. Solutions must be easily accessible and encrypted on all personal laptops and smartphones while allowing healthcare professionals the ability to easily make requests, receive notifications, and communicate with one another.

While medical staff scheduling software does reduce the need for managerial oversight, the software also equips managers with an extra set of eyes. There are some scheduling software solutions that require managerial permission settings foremployees to freely insert their scheduling preferences, while some still provideoversight through approval processes.

All medical staff scheduling software monitors employee activity in some form. Even basic scheduling solutions can track and store an employee’s days off, paid time off, and overtime. More advanced scheduling software solutions analyze those same metrics to add more context for HR departments to help identify trends and other insights. Some even take factors such as hours worked, overtime, sick leave, and PTO, andautomatically send them directly to payroll, free from any errors.

Automation significantly helps to simplify tasks like tracking compliance and monitoring overtime and absences. Additionally, both managers and staff avoid the hassle of creating shift assignments, reducing unwanted overtime, lowering the possibility of no-shows, and receiving full visibility into their teams’ schedules and conflicts. 

Overall, this provides a better staff experience and improves retention which will translate into better care.

Poor communication leads to many serious problems such as employees quitting, bad customer service, and more.

Forbes found that two of the top five reasons employees are unhappy at their job are due to communication issues. Using Connecteam’s scheduling app with built-in communication features makes it much easier for managers and employees to stay on the same page by sharing updates and filling open shifts quickly. Additionally, the work chat feature provides a safe and secure space for peers to communicate professional information.

When you have a schedule that works for all your employees and services the needs of your patients, then the entire team can feel valued, satisfied, and engaged. Whereas a discouragedemployee may easily skip a shift just because it doesn’t fit their work-life balance.

Nurse scheduling software significantly decreases how long it usually takes to create and maintain shift schedules, plus it helps to minimize employee turnover. When your nursing team feels like their scheduling preferences have been taken into account and they’re not stretched too thin they will be far less stressed and burnt out. Which in turn leads to less turnover, less money spent on recruiting, onboarding, and training new hires. The result? Higher efficiency, productivity, and retention.

Connecteam’s software complies with state and local labor laws, like overtime and sick leave, so you can create a schedule that truly works for everyone. It even integrates directly with QuickBooks Online and Gusto, for a truly seamless, 100% accurate payroll.

Read more about how one home care agency saves time on administrative tasks, enhances its scheduling, and keeps the team engaged with Connecteam’s healthcare staff scheduling software.

In a single click, you can quickly add shifts and publish them to all your employees. Create single, multiple, or team shifts, and upload shift bulks with an Excel file. Plus, with the calendar view, drag & drop options, and ability to copy last week’s shifts, you save a ton of time on creating and organizing, allowing you to focus on the big picture.

If you need to create recurring shifts or dispatch jobs, Connecteam has you covered! View the schedule by employees or shifts so that you can decide what will work best for everyone. Once schedules are published, your employees receive an automated notification so they are up to date about when they need to clock in.

When your nursing staff has to make house calls or provide in-care services, Connecteam enables GPS status updates. Customize the status updates for your employees when they check in at the location and can report once the work is completed. Each status update also pins the employee’s current location using GPS mapping.

Scheduling healthcare professionals require the right person to be scheduled for the right client or patient. With Connecteam, you can create smart groups to organize your employees by their location, certifications, or even their work preference. In a nutshell, smart groups help automate your work. Employees are added and removed from smart groups according to their profile details, and then automatically added and removed from team chats, jobs, and more.

With Connecteam, you can create custom fields on an employee’s user profile as a smart way to identify and group your workforce. Add certifications, skills, and more relevant information to a profile so that when creating a schedule, you can filter by custom fields to ensure the right employees are added to a specific job.

In fact, you can qualify people for jobs by their professional experience (which you add in their user details) and make sure that only qualified employees are assigned to each job/shift.

Schedule changes shouldn’t come in the way of providing excellent patient care. With Connecteam, your employees can request shift swaps, grab open shifts, and check schedule updates, all from their smartphones. Some of the crucial functions every healthcare company needs to manage and engage its deskless workforce.

Make sure your staff has all the necessary information to provide exceptional service. Each shift has the ability to include the location for quick navigation, notes with a free text description, and file attachments. Additionally, you can include access to documents such as policies, procedures, and operation manuals, to make sure your staff is aligned and up to date.

Connecteam automatically warns managers when schedules create overtime or an employee falls into overtime, while also allowing managers to set custom scheduling rules that follow regulations and their company’s needs.

With updated and real-time employee data available at the click of a button, managers can actually anticipate scheduling needs, create realistic plans, and provide consistency to their staff.

Set shift-related tasks and oversee their execution. You’ll have full clarity on the progress of your team’s tasks, and you will be notified when tasks are completed, so you can boost your operational efficiency and raise your team’s execution standards.

Let’s say you want your nurses to confirm that they are awake during their night shifts at 12 AM and 2 AM. You can create this as shift tasks in their night shifts, and as a manager, you can see at what time the nurse marked that he or she is awake and you even get a push notification about it.

Connecteam’s medical staff scheduling software has a chat and a work directory integrated into the software so employees save time on retrieving relevant information and contacting the right manager when needed.

Connecteam is the only nurse scheduling software that doesn’t charge per each user. Instead, you pay a fixed monthly fee starting at $29/month for up to 30 users. If you require more than 200 users, there’s a fixed Enterprise plan as well. Start with a free trial now to test out Connecteam’s scheduling features!

Connecteam makes scheduling a breeze for healthcare professionals. From automating scheduling processes to streamlining real-time, trackable, digital communication and training across the entire company. Find out why so many healthcare agencies choose Connecteam as their scheduling solution.