Friday, March 21, 2008

Staff Scheduling in Assisted Living Communities

How Assisted Living Communities develop staff work schedules, impacts both Staff and Resident Satisfaction and PROFITS. Integral to this discussion, is an understanding of "Shift Productivity".

Shift Productivity is the ratio of Service Hours to Work Hours. For example, if staff work an 8 hours shift, during which time they provide 6 hours of direct resident service, 6/8= 75% shift productivity.

If Shift Productivity was 100%, staff would be exhausted, residents may not get there service on time since one resident taking more time would throw off all the other services. Residents would feel as though staff was not available and therefore not interested in their welfare.

Shift Productivity also effected profits. If it is set too low, say 50% or only providing 4 hours of service for each 8 hour shift, would staff costs would double, and compared to your competition, possible price you out of the market.

PALs suggests pricing services based on 15 minutes of staff time. To figure your staff cost calculate your "fully loaded" hourly rate x 1+(100-shift productivity). So if your hourly rate for an aide is $16 and your shift productivity is 75% then your price per 15 minutes of staff time is, 16/4 x 1+(1.00-.75) = $5.00 per 15 minutes. Add on Overhead and Return-On-Investment (30%) and staffing become a revenue center when you charge (5 x 1.30) or $6.50 per 15 minutes. And all your staff time is paid if you take into consideration Shift Productivity when developing the staff work schedule.

Another advantage of using this Shift Productivity ratio is that it eliminates "Service Creep". If you define service creep as unpaid service, if all your staff time is "paid for", service creep becomes a service opportunity not a problem to be eliminated.

This Shift Productivity ratio also equalizes shifts, so one shift is not seen as providing more service than another. And staff are provided an incentive to report all additional services, otherwise they may be working harder than another shift.

In summary, when scheduling staff and pricing services, you need to factor in Shift Productivity. PALs will do the calculations for you and monitor compliance.

For related information see "7 Steps to Profits" below.

To download a free trial of PALs, just visit our website at http://www.palssoftware.com/

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