Labor Savings in Workforce Management at Alverno Laboratories | Creating Efficiencies at Scale
Executive Summary
As with most hospital and reference laboratories, staff scheduling, compliance management and overall workforce management (WFM) grows increasingly complex by the year. Alverno Laboratories felt this pain acutely as they expanded from small beginnings in 1999 to approximately 2000+ staff multi-state integrated laboratory system that it is today.
In 2010, Alverno’s President & CEO, Sam Terese, saw an opportunity to utilize cloudbased software automation to address the key issues that complexity, staff shortages and increased regulations brought to his organization.
In selecting StaffReady as Alverno’s software partner, he was able to alleviate the most challenging issues, increase efficiencies and optimize staffing without sacrificing employee morale. StaffReady proved to be the clinical WFM solution Alverno was looking for to address leadership’s desire to maintain high-quality laboratory testing in an environment that prioritized employee work/life balance.
Alverno Challenges
As Alverno grew, the organization began to feel the pinch of managing 1000+ staff spread across their system which encompasses hospital laboratories, patient service centers, and in office phlebotomists across Indiana and Illinois, as well as a multidepartment central laboratory in Hammond, IN.
Sites were sharing employees but had no ability to transparently manage their real-time locations or the status of their competencies. In addition, there were gaps in systemwide
awareness of leave status and shift bids, standardization of naming conventions, predictive overtime reporting, and consistent audit trails.
Further, morale around the critical area of scheduling was low across the board. Managers felt the schedule was never complete or satisfactory for their staff, while staff felt the schedule was not published far enough in advance to plan activities or vacations, and were also unable to access it from home.
Additionally, managers were facing competency deficiencies during inspections, further increasing pressure to pivot to a different approach to managing all aspects of compliance and competency assessment processes.
In making these decisions to automate, how staff perceived and experienced these changes mattered significantly to leadership.
“We wanted to empower our employees and give them online access and control overmanaging their work/life balance,”Terese said. “This was a significant consideration as we approached this decision.”
If you’d like to learn more about how StaffReady can help your organization achieve similar success, let’s get connected today and book a free demo with one of our experts.
StaffReady Solutions
StaffReady Scheduling
In 2010, Alverno was introduced to StaffReady through a mutual Compass Group partner, Pathology Associates Medical Labs (PAML). Dr. Tom Tiffany and Rosalee Allan demonstrated the effective use of StaffReady at PAML (now owned by LabCorp) and Alverno expressed interest.
In 2010, a decision was made: the gen lab department located at Alverno’s central laboratory in Hammond, IN, would pilot StaffReady (SR) Scheduling to 350 staff. The organization would then look at SR Competency once the effectiveness of SR Scheduling was evaluated.
Early on, Alverno had the option to adopt a scheduling module connected to the system-wide time and attendance platform. However, the more generic solution didn’t include necessary lab-specific functionality. As Terese commented, “StaffReady schedules the entire lab; other solutions do not.”
StaffReady Scheduling provided a cloud-based solution with an automated rules engine that could handle the multiple locations, shift times and skill levels as well as leave and shift bid management, employee communication and visible online schedules for viewing. StaffReady had been providing laboratory-specific staff scheduling solutions since 2006; the product’s layout and functionality worked well from the beginning.
The pilot was successful, and a larger rollout of SR Scheduling began with adoption throughout other departments at the central laboratory (Micro, AP, Molecular, etc.) and then to all hospital laboratories Alverno was managing within the organization’s network. SR Scheduling became the adopted scheduling solution as part of the larger initiative to improve WFM.
StaffReady Competency
With SR Scheduling deployed across the Alverno network, SR Competency was piloted in 2015.
Leaders experienced many of the same issues with competency assessment tracking and maintenance as they had with scheduling: lack of transparency for competency status –
individual and system-wide, inability to communicate easily with staff, paper and spreadsheet-based solutions to manage complex CLIA requirements, and inability to collaborate with other managers easily.
A pilot of SR Competency was launched in 2015 with a small group of managers tasked with competency tracking at a system-level. Alverno had developed an Education Committee with key individuals as members, all responsible for implementing system wide standards related to CLIA standards in preparation for inspections and overall exceptional management.
The Education Committee played a key role in the refinement of how to utilize SR Competency for their dispersed workforce environment. The flexibility of online access with a centralized portal allowed changes made centrally to be implemented system wide.
The pilot of SR Competency was also successful, and a year-long system rollout commenced in stages. By 2016, all staff had transitioned to utilizing SR Competency for individual assigned-competency tasks as well as management level administration of the entire competency assessment and compliance system.
Team Results
SR Scheduling
Working with Alverno’s dedicated and skilled staff, StaffReady drastically reduced the amount of time required to create and manage a schedule. Additional savings were recognized in daily schedule maintenance such as approving and managing leave, which also lead to a reduction in emails, phone calls and in-office visits regarding the schedule.
Since StaffReady Scheduling is a cloud-based solution, the staff can now access the schedule from anywhere using a web browser or phone, and multiple people can access the schedule at once while still allowing managers to make edits. Staff can submit vacation requests and shift trades electronically, which eliminates back-and-forth phone and email communication. Managers can audit everything to see what changes were made and approve paid time off and shift trade requests.
• Schedule-creation labor expense: 50+% reduction annually
• Emails, phone calls, paper form management and in-office visits dramatically
reduced or eliminated
• Streamlined leave and shift bid process
• Real-time reporting for better decision making
• Templated schedules
• Alerts to avoid overtime shift changes
• Full web and mobile access
• High staff satisfaction
As Terese points out, high staff satisfaction is reflected in current employee engagement scores. “The common complaints we used to hear have disappeared. Inability to see schedules, deficient leave awareness, imperfect shift assignments, and perceived favoritism in shift preferences and placement, these issues never come up anymore on our annual staff surveys.”
SR Competency
One of the biggest wins for Alverno relates to inspection results as well as standardization. In 2015 prior SR Competency adoption, Alverno was sited with 15 citations regarding staff competency and was a system wide concern. It was an issue that had the attention of senior leadership throughout Alverno, including Terese.
“The issue of deficiencies in yearly inspections was keeping me up at night. It’s one of the main reasons we continued our engagement with StaffReady. Not only had they streamlined scheduling; they improved our entire compliance and competency management process as well.”
In 2016, the next inspection cycle yielded only 3 citations according to Robin Ades, recently retired Regional Laboratory Director at Alverno.
She further explained, “Our model for leaders is quite lean. We’re able to function well within this model is due to our standardization practices and having those standards located and deployed system-wide within StaffReady. Leaders no longer review each competency individually; this is done at a system level. It’s a huge win when your lab can standardize across so many areas.”
Other benefits include:
- Real-time dashboard shows completed and outstanding competencies by
department, role or individual - Automated assignment tracking, review and documentation of competencies
with smart triggers and built-in reminders - Real-time audit trails, digital signatures and automatic version control
- Uploading of common inspection checklists (CAP, Joint, etc.) and task
dissemination to appropriate staff - Build assessments such as checklists and direct observations, problem-solving
exercises and quizzes; all six required methods of competency assessment
supported
Staff satisfaction with SR Competency has improved over previous manual systems as well.
Conclusion
StaffReady’s Scheduling and Competency modules meet all the unique needs of Alverno’s laboratory leaders and front-line staff.
Scheduling tasks are more efficient now with all data online and in one centralized location. The interface is easy for the staff and managers to use, and the ability to access the schedule from home is one of the biggest staff satisfiers. The staff can access the schedule on their phone, tablet or home computer, check their shifts, request trades and communicate directly with their manager regarding trades and leave within the communication portal.
Managers have real-time access to staff communication, schedules posted and in progress as well as the status of all competency and compliance-related tasks systemwide.
Most importantly, StaffReady allowed Alverno’s leadership to continue expanding their vision of staff work/life balance into the key area of workforce management.
