5 Ways To Improve Employee Scheduling In Long-Term Care Homes

Scheduling and shift management can be a huge challenge for staff in long-term care and senior living homes, especially during a pandemic. A shortage of qualified caregivers, combined with increasing demand for services, puts a huge strain on scheduling managers. Not to mention the stress of juggling last-minute changes and back-to-back shifts.

Better shift filling solutions are needed to reduce time spent on shift planning, curb employee turnover, and improve patient care. Here are 5 ways to help make staff scheduling easier for your assisted living facility, long term care home, or senior healthcare facility.

1. Understand Your True Staffing Needs

It’s easy to think that you should always be recruiting, given the healthcare industry’s high turnover rate. However, after digging deeper, you may realize you have enough staff—they just need to be scheduled more efficiently. If you use a shift filling app or software, you have access to data that will show recurring gaps and staff utilization. You’d be surprised how many staffing issues in nursing and long-term care homes are caused by an inaccurate picture of scheduling needs.

2. Plan Ahead for Staffing Gaps

You can’t predict when an employee is going to call in sick or have an emergency that keeps them from coming to work. But you can avoid a scheduling crunch by planning ahead for busy times and holidays (when more workers tend to be away). Look at historical data within your organization as well as tracking patient occupancy in the near-term. This will help you anticipate and account for your ever-changing scheduling needs. 

3. Communicate Early and Often

Poor communication is a top driver of employee dissatisfaction and ultimately, turnover. On the other hand, the more informed your staff is, the more empowered they will feel. Make the upcoming schedule available to your team as far in advance as possible so they can plan their lives. Encourage employees to provide their shift preferences—preferred days, day shifts vs night shifts, weekdays vs weekends, etc.—as well as time-off requests. When you need to make changes, be clear and explicit.

4. Use a Scheduling App or Shift Planning Software

Shift filling software and scheduling apps assist with communication by broadcasting open shifts to your nursing home or long-term care home staff in real-time. Many shift-filling solutions include an app that automatically notifies eligible caregivers of new open shifts as they happen. This enables your team to take an active role in scheduling by filling or declining open shifts on their own, with less interaction required from you. Shift management software also helps limit scheduling errors by automatically updating availability and time-off data as caregivers add it.

5. Strike a Balance Between Flexibility and Consistency

Try to remember that your employees have lives outside of work. They may have personal or family demands which have intensified during the pandemic. If possible, try to provide options when it comes to starting times, days worked, and shift length. A bit of flexibility goes a long way in boosting employee morale and retention.

That being said, while things may need to change from time to time, most employees will appreciate a framework of consistency in their schedule. Employees like knowing when they’ll be free throughout the week for a few reasons: it makes it easier to plan their life outside of work. It makes it easier for them to project the expected income. And it reduces the stress employees feel around work-life balance.