An overview of the functionality required in Agency
software packages
Any Agency
software package must support the practice of effective
temporary staff management. This can be broken down into four main
categories: efficient (customer) request gathering, resourceful
(employee) availability generation, well organised booking of
employees to clients and cost effective administration of the
payment and invoicing processes.
Request gathering.
To promote efficiency, vacancy information should be gathered in
a number of ways and then correlated.
- Phone/voice: the traditional mechanism, where the phone
operator should be presented with a series of pick lists which both
progressively reveal choices to the operator limiting and guiding
their recording of the request. This method still has advantages
where vacancy cover is may be involved in some sort of trade
off.
- Web: here the choices should also be progressive and limited to
those authorised for that user. Only valid selections should be
presented to the user as the request is entered. For example a
department that does not work night shifts or only employs specific
staff should only have day shifts and those appropriate
qualifications presented as choices. Also MRU (most recently used)
times should be presented to speed data entry. There should
be provision for a staged request process where lesser qualified
(but still authorised) individuals can record the initial vacancy.
This is then confirmed by an authorised manager before it can be
filled. There should be an email or SMS (text) notification up and
down this chain.
- Email where standard format emails are used: these should be
read automatically into the main database to be immediately
available, with translation where needed from customer descriptions
to standard in house descriptions. An alarm (email) should advise
that a new request has arrived.
Availability generation.
Availability information should be gathered and correlated in
the maximum number of ways possible to ensure the best utilisation
of available resources.
- Phone/voice: whenever an employee is on the phone, the office
consultant should have the ability to update availability (and any
other employment critical data) and offer outstanding
vacancies.
- Web: a simple web interface should allow employees to
(directly) update their own availability and see their bookings
both on a standing (weekly repeated basis) and on a day by day
basis.
- Mobile: with the advent of more sophisticated phones the Web
interface should be available in an appropriate style on the more
modern phones. Otherwise standard text (SMS) functions should be
implemented where appropriate.
- Text / Email reminders should be sent when availability has not
been updated for rolling week(s) in advance.
- Registration: Employees current and potential should be able to
register their interest securely and automatically via a web
interface. To eliminate unnecessary administration and set up
costs, there must be a simple secure way to link new web profiles
(registrations) with existing back office entries.
Employee booking.
As this is the event that actually generates the cash flow, thes
options should be promoted across the board.
- Office: A diary or journal should present outstanding vacancies
and availability (historically completed bookings as well) for
quick and effective placement. Work rules and laws, employee and
client preferences should be automatically and fully taken into
consideration to prevent inappropriate bookings. At this point
there are two options: The first is to provide the consultant with
appropriate information for cost effective booking and where a
vacancy may not have a pre-notified suitable employee allow the
consultant to use their skills to "discover" previously
un-available staff. The second is to try to use some
sort of automatic or inhuman process. There are a number of
technical and non technical reasons why this later process may be
significantly less cost effective and indeed more costly over a
period of time than the Human interface of the good consultant.
These are discussed in the attached document.
- Web: The web should be used to provide a booking facility to
authorised Manager for their respective areas of authority. The
Interface should be simple, secure, by definition available 24/7
and out of office. It should draw fully on the availability stored
by the system with due regard to work rules and laws, employee and
client preferences. When web booking occurs there should be
automatic notification via and SMS (text) to both the designated
employee and other members of the management (request generation
chain). The employee should be able to accept or reject the booking
offer via the web or via SMS (text) reply. The system should allow
multiple offers and acceptance / rejection to any given employee to
be active any time. However once a booking is accepted, overlapping
offers should automatically be withdrawn and management
automatically notified.
When booked jobs are displayed, identity information on employees
should be available to authorised logged on users.
- Text / Email: Job offers acceptance and rejection should be
communicated automatically via text (and backed up by email
messages) where appropriate. The communications should be both to
employee and the various appropriate concerned individuals for the
original vacancy request.
Payroll and Invoice Administration.
Payroll and Invoice processes benefit from automation because of
the ellimination of humaan error and increased transparency by
making more detailed information more readlily available. This
minimises queries from both employees and clients.
- The system should be able to import and export employee data
from standard vanilla payroll and accountancy systems (such as ESR
in the NHS) via a range of standard formats. In addition it is
essential that it provides automatic verification and error
checking to ensure that employees (and invoiced customers) are
charged at the correct contracted rates. Issues such as payroll
assignment numbers being accidentally reutilised for different pay
grades so causing ambiguous exports should be automatically
trapped. Contractual information for rates in different
departments and working with different responsibilities (or indeed
ad hoc agreements) should be readily available with standard
reports. The system should maintain an audit trail of these
contractual settings. These processes should be largely automatic
and "instant" with manual audited overrides. Secure mechanisms
should be used to communicate the information between
systems. This information should be available via appropriate
the Web interfaces for employee and management access. Thus largely
eliminating time consuming and inevitably costly queries which need
to be dealt with manually by the staff running the employment bank
or finance department.
- Given that a web system is in place Timesheets should be signed
by Employee and Dept Management electronically where possible.
Unique booking references should be used to limit accidental errors
and fraud. These should only be disclosed to authorised
individuals. The time sheet evaluation process should also allow
performance to be scored, and this should automatically reflect
back to the staff allocation page to improve the allocation
process.
Summary
There are low cost of ownership software systems available off
the shelf. Added value applications Ltd provides 98% of the above
functionality with the exception of automatic employee rostering
optimisation. For a Trust with a budget of say £50,000 to £100,000
annual spend on Temp Bank software, Ava will guarantee a saving of
£40,000 to £90,000 pa. To justify a Budget holder writing a
cheque for £50,000, the expensive, high cost of ownership software
supplier must absolutely guarantee a saving of double this figure.
Otherwise you might as well spin a coin to see if you will save
money. The accompanying document which considers the complex
problem of automatic optimisation, when and where it works, when
and where it may actually cost money. Yes you could well be
financially worse off in coming times of strict budgetary
constraints. The article may help you see some of the smoke and
mirrors involved in a number of sales pitches.
Acknowledgments
In preparing the accompanying document I have had numerous
conversations with Dr Peter Kelen of Power Optimisation, Dr David Nelson whose Doctoral thesis was on
optimisation of Nurses within a Hospital Trust in New Zealand and
Dr Barry Stoker who is heavily
involved in extensive analytical, modelling, business and research
consultancy including employment optimisation for large commercial
groups.
