Get Your Board On Board

You’ve analyzed your workforce challenges and spotted areas of improvement. Now, you need to get leadership aligned on the tactics and technology needed to manage workforce risk.

This guide can help you start that conversation. The talking points below help explain the value of workforce technology and flexible workforce resources to executive leadership, address common objections, and align your organization around a stronger workforce strategy.

Investing in New Workforce Technology

Making the Case

OnShift’s workforce management technology is built specifically for senior care organizations and has helped thousands of communities optimize workforce operations.

By adopting this software, we can automate time-consuming administrative tasks and streamline scheduling processes so our teams can spend more time supporting caregivers and residents.

OnShift’s platform would give us the visibility and data we need to control costs, fill shifts more efficiently, and reduce compliance risks.

Combatting Objections

Our employees don’t like new technology.

The data says the opposite. In a survey of senior care employees:

• 64% said more technology would help them provide quality care
• 55% are excited and open to trying new technology
• Only 5% said technology is too complicated or difficult to use
• Just 2% are resistant to trying new technology at work

Another survey reinforced these trends, finding that healthcare employees are less likely than the overall workforce to believe new technologies will make their jobs more frustrating or difficult.

In many cases, technology helps reduce and simplify administrative burden and allows team members to focus more on delivering quality care.

New technology is too hard to implement.

OnShift Schedule X is designed to be intuitive and easy to learn. On average, schedulers only need about 2.5 hours of training to begin using the platform.

OnShift also provides a dedicated customer success manager who helps guide our teams through implementation and answers questions along the way. We would also have access to ongoing training and an on-demand learning portal to support new team members as they join our organization.

Our workforce costs are already eating into our budget, so we can’t afford to add another expense.

For many use cases, workforce management technology quickly pays for itself.

OnShift has helped thousands of senior care communities reduce costs associated with overtime, agency usage, and employee turnover.

Some results achieved by OnShift customers include:

These improvements can help stabilize labor costs while improving workforce satisfaction and retention.

Adding More Workforce Resources

Making the Case

Demand for senior care continues to grow, and many teams are feeling the strain. In a survey of senior care employees, 68% said that their workload has increased as demand for senior care services rises. 44% said having a larger workforce would help them feel more prepared to meet that demand. Adding independent professionals to our workforce when we can’t meet demand spikes can provide the critical relief valve needed for our employees to avoid burnout.

Having a backup workforce strategy also protects our organization from broader risks. Workforce instability could expose us to regulatory, liability, and reputational concerns in addition to operational disruption.

We need to ensure we have adequate workforce resources in place so we aren’t exposed to penalties related to staffing or survey citations from coverage gaps. Our reputation could also be impacted if we cannot maintain appropriate care coverage.

By ensuring we have a plan to supplement our workforce when needed, we can respond more quickly to demand changes, new residents, or unexpected turnover.

Combatting Objections

Instead of engaging contract workers, can’t we just have our employees pick up more shifts or have administrators help with caregiving work?

Burnout is already a major issue in senior care.

In a survey of senior care employees, high levels of stress and burnout are the top reason employees say they are considering leaving the industry. If we continue asking our employees to take on additional shifts and responsibilities, we risk increasing turnover and decreasing our quality of care.

Adding another workforce source will be too much for our schedulers to manage.

Managing multiple workforce sources can be challenging if systems are disconnected. However, OnShift’s employee scheduling software integrates with ShiftKey’s independent professional marketplace, so schedulers can manage the entire workforce through a single tool.

This actually reduces administrative work: the integration automatically identifies open shifts within our schedule and advertises them on the ShiftKey marketplace. This gives us a backup plan if our employees are unable to fill a shift while reducing manual administrative work.

Senior care communities using the integration of ShiftKey and OnShift have seen results such as:

Independent professionals are too expensive.

The real cost often comes from alternatives: excessive overtime, employee burnout and increased turnover.

If we do not maintain proper coverage levels, we also risk reputational damage and potential compliance issues. ShiftKey has guardrails that help us manage spending with no hidden fees or surge pricing.

Communities using the OnShift and ShiftKey integration have reported significant beneficial results:

Providing More Scheduling Flexibility to Your Employees

Making the Case

Flexibility has become increasingly important for healthcare workers.

A recent survey found that only 79% of healthcare workers say they are able to take time off they are owed, and 38% indicate specifically that more time off would most benefit their mental well-being and reduce burnout.

By using technology that makes schedule management mobile and helps us offer partial shifts, we can make work more flexible, retain more employees, and provide better care.

Combatting Objections

How do we give employees more flexibility without creating more work for our schedulers?

Providing employee flexibility doesn’t mean that schedulers need to constantly rearrange schedules.

OnShift makes it easy by providing self-service tools for employees in an easy-to-use mobile app. With the OnShift app, employees can view their schedules and request open shifts.

The app is also available to schedulers so they can manage call-offs and approve shift requests on the go. OnShift further reduces administrative time with configurable schedule templates, overtime guardrails, and automatic reports.

On average, senior care organizations that use OnShift Schedule X save 300 hours of scheduling time annually.

There’s no ROI for flexible scheduling.

Flexible scheduling is a powerful recruitment and retention tool.

Taking into account administrative time, training, and recruitment expenses, replacing just one employee can cost three-to-four times a position’s annual wages. Even if we reduce CNA turnover by just one employee per quarter, we could save $480,000 per year.

OnShift offers other employee benefits, like earned wage access and automated rewards and recognition programs. These benefits, paired with flexible scheduling, have improved employee satisfaction at other senior care organizations and yielded these results:

Moving Forward

Getting leadership aligned on workforce strategy isn’t easy, especially when budgets, technology adoption, and care quality are part of the conversation. The talking points above can help you start those discussions and address common concerns. If you’d like additional guidance tailored to your organization’s workforce challenges, connect with the OnShift team to learn how senior care communities like yours are approaching workforce risk and building more resilient scheduling strategies.