Staffing Best Practices: How Healthy Are Your Staff Schedules?

A new study by BMC Public Health found that nurses' health and their job performance are linked to the shifts that they work.

Tim Mullaney explains in a McKnight's Long-Term Care News article, "Those nurses whose schedules were changed as requested perceived their work ability to improve." And, nurses who wanted to change their shifts but were unable to "reported the lowest initial and follow-up scores on a work ability index, the researchers found."These findings validate how important staff schedules are to care givers in long-term care and senior living. The results are backed by powerful data--from more than 11,000 nurses working in eight European countries in a variety of environments including long-term care. Wow!

One of the things that I've noticed in the long-term care and senior living market is that community administrators and executive directors generally want to honor the shift requests of their employees. Unfortunately it's not that easy, as most communities rely on paper or spreadsheet schedules that are out of date the moment they are published. Add in employee absences, last minute shift requests, holidays, undesirable weekend NOC shifts, no-shows...well I'm sure you get the picture. That's why it's so important to use an automated system that can help your schedulers manage shifts and match employees' preferred work shifts with organizational needs and the needs of your patients and residents.

At OnShift, we pay very close attention to the link between work schedules and employee engagement and satisfaction. We recently released a mobile app just for employees, so they can tap to manage their staff schedules, preferred employee shifts, and communication preferences. Our goal is to make it easy for employees to access and manage their schedules, and easy for the organization to staff properly and consistently each and every shift to meet their operational, financial and clinical goals through staff scheduling and labor management.

Next time an employee calls in sick or a PTO request is denied because it was too difficult to accurately determine staffing requirements for that day, think about how these issues can add up to bigger meaning -- one that affects their job performance and even their health. And ask yourself, how healthy are your staff schedules and scheduling processes at your organization? Maybe it's time to remedy the situation.

You can read more about this topic in our whitepaper, 5-Step Action Plan to Improve Employee Engagement. And, you can learn more about our mobile app for employees here.