And yet this was the case with Leeds Teaching Hospital NHS Trust until just recently. “Despite being one of the biggest Trusts in the UK, our rostering processes were rudimentary to say the least. Until recently, that is, when we implemented MAPS Healthroster, an electronic rostering tool,” says Sue Dodd, Senior Sister on the Infection and Travel Medicine ward at the body.

 

Expenditure on staff accounts for three quarters of NHS running costs, but up to 4% of nursing hours are lost across the organisation due to the inefficient management of the workforce. How staff are rostered and how their time is managed can have a significant impact on hospital trust budgets.

 

It all seems a bit, well, early 20th century, does it not? Not surprisingly, spending watchdogs like the National Audit Office have been pushing Trusts to adopt approaches like electronic rostering systems as a way to help control demand for temporary workers, optimise the use of permanent staff and reduce overhead costs through integration with payroll systems.

 

Electronic rostering systems enable managers to draw-up rosters quickly and achieve a better skill-mix of workers. Trusts have been under pressure to reduce their reliance on agency nurses. They are now being asked to make cuts in in-house nursing staff too.

 

 

With the aid of e-rostering, employees can roster themselves to work according to pre-defined time slots. Line managers then confirm their attendance, ensuring that workers’ pay accurately reflects the work done.

 

“By introducing e-rostering, I can say with absolute certainty, not only are we running our wards efficiently and within budget, but we’re actually setting examples of best practice for other hospital trusts to follow,” Dodd declares. “This turnaround is invaluable in today’s marketplace. With government cuts creating a demand for new ways of working, and reforms coming to the fore to encourage greater competition from the private sector, modernisation is a necessity for all hospitals.”

 

Although Leeds is an acute medicine department that has patient care as its priority, staff were spending at least two and a half hours each week writing out timesheets manually. Today, managers can update the system in a couple of seconds each day.

 

“We’ve also done away with repetition,” says Dodd. “Whereas before we had to complete the off-duty roster, weekly attendance management forms, monthly sickness and absence statistics and monthly time sheets, any changes made to one roster now cascade to the rest, including payroll. This also means that we can be certain that our pay is 100% accurate.”

 

Senior nurses now have more time to spend on the wards, tending to patients’ needs and doing the job they signed-up for in the first place. Managers have also managed to distance themselves from some of the personal politics that goes hand-in-hand with doing the roster.

 

 

“Allocating shifts is now led by the wards’ needs, rather than individual staff requests. With e-rostering, we can put the onus on the system to make the right judgment, which invariably leads to fairer and more popular outcomes for the staff,” Dodd comments.

 

So for example, rather than having to negotiate who should and should not work on Christmas Day, it becomes possible to pull up historical records and let the system make the decision based on past scenarios. “The same applies to the most popular shifts like bank holidays, which offer double pay. We now have a league table of requests, which we can share with the team to demonstrate that cover has been awarded on an equitable basis,” Dodd says.

 

Another benefit of the system is that Leeds can keep track of overtime, which means that personnel can claim  for additional or long shifts worked more easily than was previously the case. Conversely, the same applies if staff have worked too few hours. Electronic rostering also helps to protect front line staff during particularly intense incidents or problematic times of year.

 

“It’s no fun dealing with a flu pandemic, for example, when 35% of your staff are on annual leave,” Dodd points out. “With the system, we can anticipate and prevent that scenario occurring, even if the outbreak itself is unforeseen.”

 

Leeds is now planning to extend its e-rostering applications to all wards and departments. “There’s no looking back now. With this fairer, safer and more efficient system in place, we’ve managed to save money by using our workforce more effectively and reduce our reliance on bank and agency staff, which is a real bonus in this economic climate,” Dodd concludes.