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Having the right scheduling approach can elevate or hinder a care provider. The right strategies can lead to less pain, better service delivery, and improve business outcomes. Here are the top 5 strategies from our users that have turned their scheduling woes around.

Tip 1: Induct your mobile workers using technology

Train your support and mobile workers from the beginning using the right technology.

A way you could approach this is to use “test” participants as part of worker onboarding. This will assist mobile workers to understand how and when to use their phones.

Walk workers through what information they need to record. This will ensure the documentation of the correct information for compliance and administrative purposes.

This strategy will save on mishaps as well as help you identify worker competency and technology gaps.

Tip 2: Revamp your scheduling approach: Supply vs Demand

Demand has always been the priority in any industry. No work means no business. Without demand, there is no supply. Yet, many care providers focus their attention on supply (mobile or support workers) when managing schedules. This can lead to missed servicing opportunities and lag time.

By considering supply, or the participant first, you can achieve better service and business outcomes. Get your scheduler to consider the service agreement and goals of the participant, before matching to availability, capability, specialisation and expertise. Factors the scheduler should consider include service deliverables, types of disabilities and needs, budget size and goals.

It is better for schedulers to see the bigger picture, or what the service intends to achieve for the participant. This means they are connecting outcomes rather than resources to customers.

Tip 3: Generate ongoing services and focus on changes - not the rework

By creating ongoing services with no end dates, schedulers can free up time spent on creating and reworking services. This is particularly beneficial for core services such as Daily Activities, Social, and Domestic.

Booking services in advance can prepare a scheduler for possible changes from participants or support workers. Other services created will generally be on demand, ad-hoc or specialised (Clinical).

One of our customers made some observations about their trends of change. Standard recipients made minimal changes within a 3-month period. Complex participants changed services weekly or even daily. Participants with new plans had more changes in the first month as it takes a while to get their routine right.

By recognising these trends, our customer was able to factor in ongoing services for 95% of their participants. For complex participants they designed the schedule one week in advance. They created Ad-hoc services with at least 24 hours' notice.

Tip 4: Build useful Participant and Support Worker segments

Who are your busiest participants? Who are your most problematic and non-responsive mobile workers?

By asking yourself these simple questions, you can save a lot of time. These questions can also have dramatic impacts on a care business if left unanswered.

Our customers addressed these questions by segmenting their participants and mobile workers.

For example, a scheduler can create a participant segment and identify those that have:

high volume of services,
those that are complex with constant changes, and
those who are new.

Others have segmented mobile workers based on:

expertise
specialisation
or grouped their mobile teams into 3 categories: A, B & C. Team A are the go-to people seeking more work and C are pure casuals.

By using segments, schedulers can predict the week's work. They can factor in the time needed to manage changes to complex participants, trends of change or have a go-to team (team A) for any last-minute changes.

Tip 5: Get the right information from Mobile Workers

Capturing information from mobile services is critical for schedulers. They need to know which services have started and if the schedule needs changes. They also need to know about any claims, or the need to escalate incidents or complaints.

One of our customers noted that 70% of their customer problems stemmed from:

scheduling issues
poor communications, and
incorrect information reported back to the office by mobile workers.

This led to billing inaccuracies, disputes, payroll issues and even a compliance correction.

The customer solved these issues by implementing a framework. The framework outlined the following for mobile technology use:

expectations
needs
requirements per situation.

This framework helped reduce confusion for mobile workers. It assisted with understanding what information was required and when.

Hopefully, these tips assist you in streamlining your organisation's scheduling process.

Karl King, Co-founder of Partners in care Pty Ltd

Karl has worked for private, NGO and government organisations in a variety of roles covering sales and marketing, IT, customer experience, human resources and business improvements. Before releasing Careflo (A cloud-based care management software in Australia) Karl’s introduction to the care industry came via his mother, a retired case manager of over 30 years.

Like many others, Karl’s passion in supporting NDIS providers stemmed from becoming the carer for his brother - an NDIS Participant with complex disabilities including SCI and profound level of deafness.

Karl is a firm believer that in a service-based industry, there is opportunity for NDIS providers to adopt customer experience-based strategies within a compliance context.

Karl enjoys spending his weekends enabling his brother to teach his son how to play basketball and tennis and hopes one day that his brother (who previously played professional basketball) will play wheelchair basketball for Australia.

You can contact Karl via email or by visiting the Partners in care website.