You know the job; you must distribute the staff with the right qualifications, for the right task and at the right time! In addition, the ideal shift plan must remain within the financial framework (budget), handle staff and equipment demand, comply with regulatory requirements and meet employee wishes.
The challenge is not always to get the roster to fit – because it usually does in the end. But the road to the finished shift plan could be a little easier – and the quality of the plan might be better.
At PDC, we have developed a program for shift planning, which we call StaffPlan. With StaffPlan, the preparation of the finished shift plan becomes easier, more manageable and in the end, you get a more precise result.
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Danish Regions
Use PDC's StaffPlan at their hospitals
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Danish Hospitals Schedule their staff using PDC’s StaffPlan
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Danish Municipalities Schedule care staff in eldercare using PDC’s StaffPlan
200.000 people’s shift plans are made using PDC’s StaffPlan
(click here and read about solutions for various industries)
StaffPlan – The program for shift planning
StaffPlan makes the future as well as the daily planning of working hours simple. The effective scheduling tools, search tools, and all relevant information are provided to you in easy-to-use screens.
In StaffPlan you can plan on several levels: General planning of duty hours, but also detailed planning with assignment of specific activities down to minutes.
Shift planning with StaffPlan takes into account many factors at the same time and balancing of:
- Financial key figures and budgets
- Staffing needs
- Rules, agreements and regulations
- Agreed working hours
- Employee preferences
- Qualifications and competencies
- Planned absence
If you want a demonstration of StaffPlan
Compliance with laws and regulations
One of StaffPlan’s most important tasks is to warn the planner if there is a breach of rules or regulations. PDC’s StaffPlan manages hundreds of complex rules and agreements. Some of the more common labor rules are built into the system, while others are defined and configured in collaboration with the customer.
Some Companies have relatively static scheduling needs, where the primary task is to ensure that Staff fulfil their time standards and possess the right qualifications. Typically, this can be achieved with basic template plans that ensure compliance with the employment requirements and not to mention all the Agreements, Labour and Industry Rules that apply in this area.
When planning becomes complicated, feel free to contact PDC and learn how our IT Solutions can support your existing workflows and assist in optimising Staff use.
Balancing staff needs
If, on the other hand, the demand for labor and qualifications fluctuates over the day, week or month, the challenge lies in balancing the staffing in relation to needs.
In these cases, companies need far more flexible and dynamic planning models. Overstaffing is expensive. Understaffing is perhaps even more expensive if one cannot produce a sufficient number of services or service customers in relation to the demand.
Some companies operate with a basic need for staffing, which is the number of staff to cover the permanent tasks. In addition, there is a dynamic need, which can be determined by sales, holidays, and the like. With “demand-based” planning in StaffPlan, it is possible to put together the work plan both in relation to the basic requirements and the more complicated needs that originate from eg:
- Work around the clock
- Tasks that are time dependent (start and end time)
- Tasks that are inter dependent on various competencies
- Safety requirements that must be met
- Employees with many different qualifications
- Risk of bottlenecks e.g. because of specialised skills
- Large variations in the need for Staff and skills
- Different Employment conditions and continuous training
It is possible to automatically import personnel requirements from external systems, just as they can also be created directly in StaffPlan. Requirements can be expressed in many different ways – for example in special activities, functions, qualifications or tasks, and in many variants such as. minutes, hours, days, weeks.
In addition, it is not only fluctuations in production that need to be dealt with. It is also day-to-day ad-hoc events that occur from day to day and consequences of changes that need to be addressed in a short period of time.
Read the article about “Demand-driven Planning”
Employee wishes
To make a shift schedule more valuable, it is important that employees take ownership of it. This is best done by involving them and giving them a say in their own working hours.
The employee app, MyPlan, gives employees the opportunity to deliver wishes for work / leisure, swap shifts and communicate with each other. It provides benefits both to the individual employee but also to the company in the form of reduced absenteeism, increased loyalty to the plans, reduced administration, etc.
Read more about “Employee Involvement”
Our Solutions also help to make happier and more satisfied Employees.
It’s common sense and good business.
Manage staff in multiple countries
Acquiring an enterprise solution enables you to gather data from many regions or countries which allows you to measure and evaluate performance of each of them. In addition, from a user’s perspective it is comfortable having a system in your own language.
PDC Plan is used by a Scandinavian retail chain in 10 different countries
All-in-one system
StaffPlan is a shift planning program that supports both the work during the “planning” period and the “production” period.
The dispatch function is one of many highly configurable screens in StaffPlan. During the production period, there is still a need to make changes to the plan, and these must be continuously registered in the system. Employees report sick. Compensation must be identified and / or other adjustments require effort to adapt to the new situation.
Powerful tools in StaffPlan help the planner with:
- Absence registration
- Identification of alternative staff
- Filtering available resources
- Overview of attendees
- Overview of tasks and re-planning
At PDC, we have 30 years of experience in developing shift planning programs. We are always in dialogue with the users, so the shift planning supports the needs you as a shift planner have in your everyday life.
If you want a demonstration of StaffPlan
Blog articles
- Why spend money on IT for shift planning?
- 3 Things to consider before roster planning
- What is a Good Shift Plan?
- Why is Shift Planning Important? And Why is it so difficult?
- What is Automatic Shift Planning?
- Unpleasant truth about automatic shift scheduling
- Payroll system’s importance to shift planning
- Shift planning should not be an administrative side job