Overtime and staffing can present major issues for medical staff – no matter whether they’re cleaning operatives or surgeons. There needs to be an effective plan in place that ensures all work is done and that neither the health of patients nor staff is compromised. Here are five ways to break out of the overtime cycle in healthcare.
Find Ways To Work Smarter And Not Harder
It’s helpful when thinking about managing overtime for employees to track all the scheduled overtime hours they do and compare them to the unscheduled ones that can creep in. Analyze the time they’re spending on tasks for each and work out where time and cost savings can be made. Sometimes, it’s the little five and ten minutes extra here and there that really add up and make staff feel like they’re overburdened.
Another example of this is to find clever ways to outsource work and tasks. For instance, many note-taking and admin tasks undertaken by medics can be successfully delegated to the services of a professional medical scribe company which can provide specially trained staff to assist with the often time-consuming roles that physics have to take on in addition to their caring and diagnoses.
Take A Look At Past Overtime Trends
Whilst you always want to look forward and see what you can do to improve as a forward-thinking healthcare company that cares about its staff, it’s also appropriate to take a step back and look at how overtime trends have evolved over the years throughout the whole business.
Compare the historical overtime data with how productive staff have been and see if it delivers constant and good value. Say for example you’re looking at the number of staff who are working in meal prep in a hospital kitchen and they’re putting in lots of extra hours – but the number of meals being prepared is no higher than without overtime, then it’s a good idea to look at determining a better level of extra hours for those workers to manage their time better.
Ensure Proper Policies And Procedures
Overtime hours in any company – but especially healthcare – are nuanced. So whilst it’s essential to follow all the legal requirements in place, and make sure employees get time and a half, there’s also a need to look at another option called the ‘eight and eighty’ rule. This is part of the FLSA (Fair Labor Standards Act). It means that a healthcare center can use a fixed work period of 14 consecutive days to work out how many overtime hours have been undertaken – instead of just using a standard forty-hour working week.
Whichever system is used to work out overtime, there still needs to be a policy in place that spells out how employee overtime is calculated, and assigned and what limits there are. There should also be a discussion with staff over how to manage overtime in policy exceptions and whether or not employees can swap overtime with others.
Put In Place Specific Schedules For Regular Hours – And Overtime Hours
Overtime isn’t an organic part of work life! It needs to follow a proper plan that not only makes use of all the various skills of healthcare staff but still keeps things as predictable as possible so that staff have continuity and don’t feel overworked or overburdened and in danger of burning out.
Putting in place a workforce management system that has proper scheduling tools and admin can help give a really clear overview of what everyone is doing, how long it is taking them, and if some people are doing more than others. The insights gathered from these can help determine whether additional hours are required and which staff need to scale back or scale up to manage their schedules effectively.
Keep Track Of Overtime Hours And Staff Commitments
Finally, it’s key to make sure overtime is kept on track by studying it in real-time. Having a clear understanding and view of what staff are doing and when, in reality, on a daily basis – you can take action before overtime (and overwork) starts to become a serious issue.
Overtime monitoring software can be used for this, which sets up notifications that will alert you to if and when workers are reaching their hourly limits and need to stop, or those staff who might need to adjust their working time for the week.
Monitoring overtime and breaking out of its cycle by putting proper boundaries in place is key to a happier, healthier workforce.