600+Employees
-47%Manager Overtime
6800Monthly Shifts
15HrsSaved Weekly
Using Shiftboard, Living Resources improved labor costs by reducing manager overtime by 47%.
Summary
In an industry where scheduling mistakes are both costly and dangerous, Living Resources, a world-class care facility for those with developmental disabilities, adopted Shiftboard to solve their schedule complexities. Focusing on schedule automation, overtime reduction, and workforce transparency, Living Resources reduced their labor costs and improved their scheduling methodology.
Spanning five counties in rural upstate New York, Living Resources centralized their scheduling software to meet state regulated labor minimums, reduce manager overtime and improve communications between staff and managers.
Results
- Improved labor costs by cutting manager overtime by 47%
- Saved 10-15 hours per week by simplifying scheduling process
- Established audit trail to show state regulated labor compliance
“Centralized scheduling with Shiftboard is the only way I can truly know what’s going on in all 60 locations at once.”Jared Hammond, Tech. Development Manager
Challenge
With the help of more than 600 employees, Living Resources provides care and support for individuals with developmental disabilities across upstate New York. Subject to state-wide regulations, Living Resources must meet staffing minimums individually set for each disability. This means they’re required to schedule qualified staff in real-time across 60 locations, each with a unique client mix. In addition to real-time scheduling, high turnover rates, overtime expenses and last-minute scheduling changes all add to their scheduling complexity.
Tasked with managing the scheduling process across all locations, Jared Hammond, technology development manager, spent 3-hours every day building and tweaking schedules in excel. According to Hammond,“it was the wild west of the scheduling world.”
Weekends were full of emails from managers seeking to fill last-minute shift changes. Forced to compete with each other, managers often flooded their staff with a deluge of emails. Out of necessity, managers took on unfilled shifts, driving up labor costs with manager overtime. Hammond knew the wild west of scheduling couldn’t last, he needed a better solution.
By mandating the use of Shiftboard throughout the organization, the cost of manager overtime has been cut almost in half. Jared Hammond, Technology Development Manager
With Shiftboard, scheduling errors are reduced by 85%.
Solution
Wanting a better scheduling solution, Hammond turned to Shiftboard. He focused on improving three key areas of his process: schedule automation, overtime reduction, and workforce transparency.
Schedule Automation
Before Shiftboard, Hammond relied heavily on multiple spreadsheets to manually track employee availability, employee qualifications, shift assignments, time-off requests and many of the other scheduling influencers.
Now, Hammond uses Shiftboard to keep track of all of his data. Shiftboard consolidates all of the relevant employee data in one location to ensure that only available and eligible employees are scheduled.
By implementing Shiftboard, Hammond eliminated his daily 3-hour scheduling routine. He now has time to focus on new trainings, business analytics and other value-add projects intended to grow Living Resources to provide better care and support to those in need.
Overtime Reduction
Before Shiftboard, scheduling was filled with last-minute scrambles. Staff inboxes were flooded with shift requests. Managers competed for staff, and those who lost were forced to work any unfilled shifts. Oftentimes, this resulted in costly manager overtime.
Coupling Shiftboard with a dedicated scheduler, costly manager overtime has been reduced by 47%. Unlike before, when managers flooded inboxes with shift requests, the staff has a centralized location where they can take control of their schedule. More often than not, the employees opt-in to work overtime, leading to improved worker satisfaction and reduced labor expenses.
Workforce Transparency
At Living Resources, all employee trainings need to be renewed every 1-2 years. The consequences for scheduling staff that doesn’t have the necessary training is dangerous and met with heavy penalties. Before Shiftboard, managers were tasked with tracking certifications and notifying workers when they were due for recertification.
Trainings are now bulk uploaded into each employee profile within Shiftboard. Notifications are sent automatically when an employee is eligible for recertification. This process both reduces manager stress and mitigates any risk of scheduling underqualified labor.
Recurring trainings are now scheduled using Shiftboard, ensuring workers’ qualifications are up-to-date at all times. This process both reduces manager stress and mitigates any risk of scheduling underqualified labor.
Beyond training transparency, Shiftboard also established an audit trail for scheduling discrepancies. Partially funded by the state, Living Resources is constantly under a microscope. They use Shiftboard to institute a trustworthy audit trail. They can easily show compliance with state regulations or run reports if an incident should ever arise.
