Forecasting for your staff can be very complicated, especially in a healthcare call center environment. Patient call volumes are constantly fluctuating; the weather, flu season, disease awareness campaigns, scholastic calendar and holidays can cause unpredictable peaks and valleys. Some healthcare facilities have access to a workforce management suite enabling them to use historical call volumes, trends and patient behavior patterns to generate an accurate forecast. Others are not as advanced, and use the Erlang C calculator to come up with a baseline to assess the total number of full time employee equivalents needed to handle the incoming call volume. This type of forecasting is generally flat and leads to staff burnout, attrition and higher abandonment rates. Frustrated employees can be tempted to search for other employment opportunities that provide a more stable environment and work life balance. High turnover rate can be crippling to patient service levels and budgets alike.
Measures must be taken to ensure that employee satisfaction and work-life balance are primary areas of focus. Employees are willing to work 1st shift, 2nd shift, 3rd shifts and split shifts but, they require ample notice to create structure, organize their lives or care for their families. Workforce management and employee empowerment with Aspect’s Healthcare Workforce Management solution is possible and can provide your staff with a schedule months in advance. Employees can plan for holidays, school schedules, child care and personal activities during their free time. Your staff will appreciate working at your healthcare facility and be more engaged in the work place. The care that you show your staff will be multiplied and transferred to the patient during crucial interactions, creating long-term patient satisfaction and loyalty.
Using workforce management technology provides you an effective way to manage your employee’s expectations, attain their consent during scheduling, decrease shrinkage and create a transparency in the workplace. Paying kindness forward through workforce management technology promotes employee satisfaction, which translates to empathetic encounters with patients, and ultimately leads to enhanced patient satisfaction measures.
Your staff and patients will thank you for it.
