Outdated staff scheduling practices are crippling the healthcare industry. If your healthcare facility still relies on spreadsheets for managing employee schedules, it’s time to acknowledge that this system is broken and needs a significant upgrade.
Thankfully, there’s a much better way. Rostering and scheduling tools for health care offer a vastly superior and automated approach, allowing you to finally retire those cumbersome spreadsheets. By implementing the right software, you can save valuable time, reduce costs, and preserve the sanity of both managers and healthcare staff.
In an industry where patient well-being is constantly at stake, selecting the optimal rostering and scheduling tool is not just important—it’s critical.
But with numerous options available, how do you determine which healthcare scheduling software best aligns with your facility’s unique needs?
Worry no more. We’ve conducted extensive research and compiled a list of the top 11 healthcare scheduling solutions designed to transform your scheduling process. Unlike generic lists, we’ve focused specifically on rostering and scheduling tools tailored for the healthcare sector.
To guide your decision-making, we will explore:
What is a Rostering and Scheduling Tool for Health Care?
A Rostering And Scheduling Tool For Health Care, also known as healthcare staff scheduling software, is a specialized system designed to create, manage, and optimize work schedules for healthcare professionals. This includes nurses, doctors, therapists, and other essential medical personnel.
These tools automate the complexities of schedule creation, taking into account crucial factors such as employee availability, skill sets, shift preferences, and regulatory compliance. They move beyond basic organization to become strategic assets in healthcare management.
The Critical Need for Effective Staff Scheduling in Healthcare
The healthcare industry is facing a severe need for effective employee scheduling. Despite advancements in other areas, many healthcare facilities still depend on outdated methods.
Alarmingly, many Nurse Managers still resort to using Excel spreadsheets to handle employee scheduling. This manual method is incredibly time-consuming, inefficient, and frustrating for both managers and employees. It’s a system prone to errors and lacks the agility required in today’s dynamic healthcare environment.
Rostering and scheduling tools for health care offer a much-needed solution, making staff scheduling more manageable, efficient, and user-friendly.
These systems bring organization to teams and departments, ensuring smooth daily operations – a particularly challenging task within the healthcare industry’s demanding landscape.
If you need to build a compelling case for adopting a scheduling tool in your healthcare facility, consider these key benefits to strengthen your argument:
1. Optimized Staffing with Agile Rostering
Rostering and scheduling tools for health care significantly enhance your ability to handle last-minute schedule changes. Instead of laboriously calling down a list of contacts to find a replacement, you can instantly notify your entire team about an open shift with a single alert.
A qualified and available employee can then accept the shift directly from their mobile device and quickly report for duty. This rapid response fills schedule gaps efficiently, ensuring optimal staffing levels and consistent, high-quality patient care without delay.
2. Boosted Employee Engagement Through Schedule Control
Modern scheduling software empowers employees by giving them greater control over their work schedules. Staff members can easily set their availability, request time off, and even swap shifts with colleagues, all while on the go.
When healthcare professionals have more input and flexibility in their schedules, employee engagement naturally increases.
What are the tangible benefits of increased engagement for your healthcare facility?
Ultimately, it translates to better patient care.
85% of engaged employees demonstrate a genuinely caring attitude towards patients, compared to only 38% of disengaged employees. This significant difference highlights how crucial employee satisfaction is to patient outcomes.
3. Improved Employee Retention in a Competitive Market
Employee retention is a critical challenge in the healthcare industry. Facilities must actively work to create an environment where staff members want to stay long-term.
Healthcare rostering and scheduling tools play a vital role in this by allowing employees to participate in shaping their work schedules.
When employees feel valued through flexible scheduling and have a better work-life balance, they are more likely to remain committed to their current jobs.
Happy employees are 87% more likely to stay with a company and remain in their positions twice as long as unhappy counterparts. Investing in employee satisfaction through better scheduling is a direct investment in staff retention.
4. Reduced Labor Costs and Overtime Expenses
Implementing a rostering and scheduling tool provides enhanced visibility and control over labor costs, particularly concerning excessive overtime. By accurately tracking worked hours and managing schedules efficiently, these tools help minimize unnecessary overtime, leading to significant cost savings.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average American worker clocks approximately 4 hours of overtime per week. For healthcare facilities with large staffs, these overtime hours can quickly accumulate, significantly impacting the bottom line. Effective scheduling software helps to curb these expenses.
We’ve covered the key reasons WHY adopting scheduling software is essential. Now, let’s explore WHICH solutions are best suited for the healthcare industry.
Top 11 Rostering and Scheduling Tools for Health Care
Staff rostering and scheduling tools for health care offer an efficient and cost-effective method for managing staff schedules, controlling labor expenses, and optimizing resource utilization.
By automating the creation, management, and tracking of staff schedules, these tools ensure that your workforce is appropriately allocated and that employees receive adequate rest time.
Selecting the right solution for your healthcare facility requires thorough research.
To assist you in your research, we have compiled a list of our top picks for staff scheduling software specifically designed for the healthcare industry.
1. MakeShift
MakeShift has been recognized as a Leader in Employee Scheduling Software and for achieving the Highest Adoption Rate in G2’s Winter 2023 Grid® Reports.
MakeShift was specifically developed to address the unique scheduling challenges in the healthcare sector. Its origin story begins with a nurse’s personal frustrations with scheduling inefficiencies.
She constantly faced scheduling conflicts, lack of mobile schedule access, and difficulties in shift swapping or accessing preferred available shifts. The manual scheduling processes were error-prone, inefficient, and cumbersome.
MakeShift was built with a people-first approach, aiming to simplify scheduling for both managers and employees. The results speak for themselves: MakeShift users experience a 50% reduction in schedule creation time and an 83% reduction in the time it takes to fill open shifts.
- Available Shift Access: Empowers employees to easily view and claim extra shifts when desired.
- Rotation-Based Scheduling: Simplifies the creation of rotating shift schedules to ensure balanced workload distribution.
- Employee Shift Exchanges: Facilitates easy shift swapping among staff with manager approval available on-the-go.
- Time Off / Leave Management: Streamlines the process of managing and approving time-off requests via mobile or web platforms.
- Overtime Alerts: Includes fatigue management rules and alerts to help prevent employee burnout and manage overtime effectively.
- Team Communication App: Enables all-staff announcements and push notifications for events like employee clock-ins, directly to your phone.
- Payroll Integration: Seamlessly integrates with leading HR and payroll systems such as SAP® SuccessFactors® and ADP for automated syncing of schedules and timesheets.
- Mobile App for Staff and Managers: Provides mobile accessibility for schedule management on-the-go.
- Skills-based Scheduling: Ensures optimal placement of highly skilled employees in the right roles at the right times.
Pricing: From $2.75 / user/month
Customer Review:
“The most impactful part of makeshift for our hospital is that employees can see their schedule and request without calling the staffing office or contacting the unit. they are able to switch shifts and request trades in the app. we are also able to send announcements and individual messages if need be.” — Stacey S.
2. Rotageek
Rotageek was designed by healthcare professionals specifically for the healthcare sector. This cloud-based digital scheduling tool creates optimized rotas for healthcare organizations and uses AI technology to forecast labor needs based on demand.
Features:
- Employee scheduling
- Time & Attendance
- Labor forecasting
- Budgeting/forecasting
- Employee management
- Performance metrics
- Mobile app
- Skills tracking
Pricing: Contact Rotageek for a quote
Customer Review:
“Makes rotas easy! Having employees see exactly when and where they are working is so useful. I love the fact that employees can request leave quickly and easily.” — Laura F.
3. QGenda
QGenda offers a comprehensive Provider Operations Platform built for healthcare. It centrally manages your workforce and optimizes capacity to deliver care. Provides real-time access to accurate call schedules across all departments.
Features:
- Automated Scheduling
- Absence Management
- Mobile App
- Resource Management
- Employee Work Status
- Time Tracking
- Mass Notifications
Pricing: Per Feature — Contact QGenda for a quote
Customer Review:
“Qgenda is easy to understand, we are all informed about any changes right away, and most importantly, we know where everybody should be and how many Attendings, CRNAs, ARNPs, etc., can work each day.” — Andrea G.
4. Shiftwizard
Shiftwizard provides Enterprise Workforce Management Software specifically for healthcare. Simplify scheduling with its robust and user-friendly guided navigation system.
Shiftwizard aims to make healthcare staff scheduling and communication straightforward, allowing staff to concentrate on patient care.
Features:
- Shift scheduling
- Workforce optimization
- Mass messaging
- Time & attendance integrations
- Self-Service capabilities
- Mobile app
Pricing: Contact Shiftwizard for a quote
Customer Review:
“[I like] the user Interface, the ease of finding the solutions, the technical team is very cooperative.” — User in health & wellness
5. OnShift
OnShift is a cloud-based workforce management software designed for long-term care and senior living facilities.
They focus on enhancing the employee experience and offer managers actionable data and insights throughout the employee journey, all within a unified software platform.
Features:
- Time & Attendance
- Mobile App
- Staff scheduling & management
- Messaging
- Resource Management
- Schedule Distribution
Pricing: Contact OnShift for a quote
Customer Review:
“I like the layout and the interface, which is very eye-catching and user-friendly. I see the interns and residents at the hospital use this all the time to schedule accurate shifts and easily change shifts between members. There is an iPhone app as well that makes it very convenient to access when not at the hospital and need to check who is on schedule at that moment.” — Christina B.
6. EasyShifts
EasyShifts offers 24/7, 365-day staff scheduling solutions. This online scheduling tool provides a simple workflow for creating and managing work schedules.
The system includes features for schedule creation and editing, mobile schedule access, employee notifications, overtime tracking, and assistance in filling last-minute call-ins.
Features:
- Shift scheduling
- Time tracking
- Schedule Template
- EasyShifts App Calendar
- Mobile app
- See staff availability
- Shift swapping
Pricing: $2.99/user/month
Customer Review:
“EasyShifts has greatly streamlined our scheduling process and has been a time saver thus allowing staff to spend more time with the residents. It has allowed staff to have more autonomy in requesting swaps, putting shifts up for grabs and picking shifts without having to use a paper and pen!” — Dawn K.
7. NurseGrid
NurseGrid is a healthcare staff scheduling solution focused on addressing short-staffing issues (a major concern in healthcare), empowering nurses to control their schedules, and facilitating real-time communication about shift changes.
Features:
- Float Pool Management
- Messaging/Shift Dispatching
- Overtime Calculation
- Shift Scheduling
- Shift Swapping
- Vacation/Leave Tracking
- NurseGrid mobile app
Pricing: Contact NurseGrid for a quote
Customer Review:
“I love that we are able to have our schedules at the tip of our fingers. We can add/edit, swap and pick extra shifts all from the app. We can also talk to other colleagues!” — User in Hospital & Health Care
8. Smartlinx
Smartlinx optimizes workforce management by connecting real-time data and processes across multiple facilities. This allows you to visualize staffing and expenses for smarter decision-making.
Designed specifically for skilled nursing and senior care, SmartLinx streamlines operations, reduces scheduling gaps and overtime, and ensures regulatory compliance.
Features:
- Shift scheduling
- Time & Attendance
- Payroll integration
- Workplace Analytics
- Skills based scheduling
- Mobile app
Pricing: Contact Smartlinx for a quote
Customer Review:
“We went from paper scheduling to cloud based. Employees appreciate seeing their schedules 4 weeks in advance. It was fairly easy to learn how to use. In depth training provided. Very customizable to our needs. CMS payroll based journal reporting very helpful.” — Stephen F.
9. symplr Workforce
symplr Workforce is designed specifically for healthcare. This cloud-based solution for timekeeping and scheduling provides in-depth insights and actionable data to support proactive staffing decisions.
Features:
- Employee scheduling
- Employee management
- Mobile app
- Shift swapping & open-shift management
- Schedule based analytics
Pricing: Contact symplr Workforce for a quote
Customer Review:
“The software is both user-friendly and has an excellent app or on the go access. The data management, employee information and license review works well and reduces administrative time.” — Jody J.
10. UKG
UKG Workforce Central™ (formerly Kronos Workforce Central) is a suite of workforce management solutions covering time and attendance, absence management, scheduling, and more.
Specifically designed to meet the scheduling needs of physicians, hospitalists, residents, advanced practice nurses, and clinical staff.
Features:
- Shift scheduling
- Time tracking
- Mobile app
- Payroll integration
- Compliance
- Employee self-service scheduling management
- Shift swap management
Pricing: Contact UKG for a quote
Customer Review:
“[UKG] Dimensions has given our employees the ability to own their data! Employees are able to access their time cards, schedules, and paystubs from anywhere using their mobile devices, and this frees up managers to be able to focus on management duties!” — Jeri H.
11. Humanity by TCP
Humanity by TCP is a cloud-based tool that healthcare facilities can use to create schedules that comply with labor laws and meet demand. It automates scheduling processes, manages conflicts, generates reports, and more.
Features:
- Employee scheduling
- Online Time Clock
- Automated Scheduling
- Mobile Access
- Vacation/Leave Tracking
- Request, track, and manage time off requests and vacation time
- Shift Swapping
- Messaging
Pricing: Contact TCPHumanity for a quote
Customer Review:
“Scheduling is super quick and easy. It calculates the number of weekly hours for the employees, and you can view schedules by position/location with unique colors, which is very helpful. Having an app is very handy, so anyone can see their schedules at any time.” — User in Hospital & Healthcare
Healthcare Rostering and Scheduling Tool Evaluation Checklist
Now that you have explored the top healthcare scheduling software options, let’s discuss how to evaluate each one to find the best fit for your organization.
Start by identifying your primary pain points. Four common issues in healthcare staff scheduling are:
- Manual schedule creation and management
- Inefficient systems for shift swapping, last-minute coverage, and approvals
- Limited accessibility to schedules and updates
- Fragmented employee communications
Remember, not all scheduling software is created equal. The right rostering and scheduling tool should simplify processes and boost efficiency.
Use this checklist when selecting your healthcare staff scheduling software:
✓ Industry Specific: Software designed specifically for healthcare is most likely to meet your unique requirements.
✓ Ease of Use: The software should be intuitive and not overly complex to learn and use for both staff and managers.
✓ Manager Approval: Streamlined, on-the-go manager approval features are crucial for efficient scheduling workflows.
✓ Internal Communication: Integrated internal communication tools enable easy shift trading and visibility of available shifts for the team.
✓ Reminders & Notifications: Push notifications to staff revolutionize communication and ensure timely updates and reminders.
✓ Mobile App: Mobile accessibility is essential for today’s workforce. A mobile app allows staff and managers to handle schedules from anywhere.
✶ Bonus Feature:
✓ Geofence clocking in & photo punch in for enhanced accountability and accuracy.
Healthcare Staff Rostering Software Is Essential
It’s clear that healthcare scheduling urgently needs improvement. Managers are overburdened with manual processes, and employees often feel disconnected from their work schedules.
Adopting a dedicated rostering and scheduling tool for your healthcare facility is a strategic step towards creating a happier workforce, achieving more efficient scheduling, and ultimately delivering higher quality patient care.
Here’s to smoother, more efficient scheduling in the years to come for your healthcare team.
Ready to Make the Shift?
