Proven Ways UKG Pro WFM Can Improve Healthcare Scheduling

Strategic Scheduling is complex

Workforce planning in the Healthcare industry is complex and challenging.   You need to juggle patient and customer care needs, budgetary limitations, skill set requirements, vacation fulfillment, burnout, and everyday fluctuations in the demand and supply of resources.

In healthcare organizations, strategic schedulingis a best practice and critical to your success. Strategic scheduling is a structured approach to staffing that focuses on productivity and efficiency. The goal is to minimize conflict, reduce inefficiencies, and optimize resource utilization. The more structured and timely the approach, the better the results will be.

But how do you strategically schedule? And how can UKG Pro Workforce Management (WFM) help? We will address these questions and more by providing four key recommendations on effective schedule strategies and which tools in UKG Pro WFM will offer the best support.

1. Early offers of open shifts with advanced scheduling 

Not every business can post schedules and offer open shifts well in advance. The more proactively an organization addresses schedule gaps, the greater the potential for savings. Savings include labor costs like overtime. Also, there is potential to reduce negative impacts at the front end, such as skill set misalignment and employee burnout. Additionally, the more time employees have to manage their work schedules and organize their personal lives, such as childcare arrangements and personal appointments, the more prepared and accountable they can be at work. Advanced scheduling ensures that the company and its individual staff members are in alignment.

How can UKG Pro Workforce Management help?

UKG Pro WFM offers efficient methods for creating schedules and identifying gaps between scheduled shifts and resource requirements.

UKG Pro WFM features for schedule building include:

• Workload planners provide a method to enter staffing coverage needs at the job level. 
• Schedule generation strategies help automate the building and identification of holes in the schedule.  
• Coverage analysis provides a high-level analysis of the schedule.  
• Shift market provides support in finding coverage for unfilled shifts (for both schedulers and employees seeking their own coverage).

These key UKG Pro WFM features help speed up the scheduling process and provide information to all parties quickly and effectively.

These are practical end-to-end tools for the scheduler role that engage employees in the schedule-building process. Rather than taking a reactive approach and only being able to handle short-notice 1-3 day gaps in the schedule, the time savings from using these tools help you extend your timeline to meet your staffing needs.

2. Engage employees to help with the scheduling process

Our healthcare clients recognize that collective bargaining agreements and company policies control the rules and basis for the schedule. Yet, understanding staff preferences helps create manageable schedules. Navigating the balancing act between compliance and employee preferences means not only workable schedules but a culture that is more flexible and employee-centric.

Features that work for your organization

UKG Pro WFM features encourage employees to be active participants in the scheduling process. Your HRchitect consultant can help you understand how to extract the details from your collective bargaining agreements and configure them into UKG Pro WFM.

HRchitect will work with your team to set up the best scheduling process to include the following UKG Pro WFM features:

• Availability tracking
• Employee preferences
• Open shift requests
• Requests to cover

Employees will be able to initiate these requests and help provide details on where they can provide their support.

These requests can indicate:

• How many hours an employee likes to work in a week
• The locations or jobs they prefer to work
• The days they are available or unavailable for short-notice shifts
• The exact shifts they would like to pick up
• In the case of Request to Cover, they can even find their own coverage for shifts they can no longer work

The result:  better work-life balance and happier staff.

3. Deploy the right tools that can effectively help you analyze the schedule at a high level

It’s important to review and address any inefficiencies or issues in a schedule, but you need the tools configured so that they can help you quickly identify issues. You also want to identify and report on gaps, meet staffing and skill requirements, and accurately forecast future staffing needs and trends.

Reporting tools that focus on scheduling success 

Many built-in reporting tools and options in UKG Pro WFM can help you review the schedule and visualize the data and reports you rely on. Decision-making is made easier with the following five tools:

1. The Schedule Planner provides additional columns for employee details, filtered call lists, rule violation flags, and built-in coverage analysis.
2. The Workload Planner displays budgeted, planned, and actual staffing models to help predict future staffing needs and identify trends.
3. WFM Reports and customizable dataviews configured to pull and export data.
4. Home page tiles personalized with live-action reporting of metrics you need.
5. Staffing dashboards give schedulers high-level daily views and coverage support.

Your HRchitect consulting team can work with you to configure these tools if you’re not familiar with how to do so, or if you don’t have the time to do so. We configure UKG Pro WFM so that you can take advantage of powerful functionality when building, monitoring, and maintaining a schedule.

4. Bring your scheduling experts in early

Whether it is new scheduling software, an upgrade, or a process change, having your scheduling team involved in the project is key. Bring these subject matter experts in early, as it is critical to have their perspective and knowledge of their requirements, day-to-day practices, and pain points. Without the operational team’s expert knowledge of the system, you may encounter rework or unforeseen gaps in the process. Lack of key information can make your implementation go-live frustrating and stressful. The goal is to automate routine tasks and enable your scheduling team with tools that can help them work more efficiently. Achieving this objective is the optimal way to transition the scheduling function from manual low-value processing to high-value analysis and proactive planning.

HRchitect brings expertise in Healthcare Workforce Management

In any HCM implementation or upgrade project, your expert Implementation Consultants (ICs) will host requirement-gathering sessions. Later in the project, there will be sessions where your IC will demonstrate the system configuration and tools.

For your Healthcare implementation, be sure to include your scheduling subject matter experts in these requirements-gathering sessions. If possible, for even better project results, you should consider including them as members of the core project team.

Involving your schedulers means these key users will get a sneak peek of the new UKG Pro WFM system before it goes live. They can provide valuable insight and input, and they get a jump start on training for the new system or upgrade. These scheduling SMEs will help you relate the software to the day-to-day scheduling needs of the business. This strategy is also a great way to uncover inconsistencies or gaps across the organizational hierarchy and realign standards.

If you do not have scheduling subject matter experts available to dedicate to the project team, consider including a client-side subject matter expert.   These seasoned consultants have a wealth of experience that can help guide you towards the optimal configuration.
These expert consultants assist you with requirements gathering, provide advice, and alleviate much of the work on your end, including data gathering and training support. Their expert advice will reassure you that your team has considered all key scheduling requirements in the new UKG Pro WFM system. Capturing these requirements helps design and configure these processes to ensure you use the UKG Pro WFM system effectively.

Final Thoughts

Scheduling your employees in a healthcare setting is very challenging. It comes with many complexities. As discussed, strategic scheduling is an effective practice that can help alleviate some of this burden. Building a schedule does not need to be stressful or time-consuming when you have the right HCM system, the right internal subject matter experts, and the right system implementation partner. HRchitect is here to lend our expertise to your scheduling implementation.

HRchitect has been implementing, optimizing, and supporting HCM and WFM solutions, such as UKG Pro WFM, for close to 3 decades.   Discover more about our healthcare expertise and contact us to explore how we can help your organization maximize the benefits of strategic scheduling.

Additional Reading:  Healthcare client case studies

Modernizing Workforce Management for HRchitect’s Nonprofit Healthcare System Client with UKG Pro WFM

Seamless Integrations and Post-Go-Live Support for HRchitect’s Healthcare client

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