How EMS Employee Scheduling Software Saves You Time

Time is a precious commodity in the world of first response and prehosptial care. Whether it’s more time to rest after a long shift or get more work done on the clock, time is something we all wish we had more of. Since you can’t get more time in the day, it’s important to make sure every minute of the day is spent wisely.

Creating and managing employee shifts can feel complicated and daunting. From overtime to PTO, shift-swapping and payroll, it’s extremely important to be able to view accurate, updated information and make informed decisions. The following are three ways an EMS employee schedule generator can help change the way your agency spends its time.

Time is Money

Do you remember the old saying, “Money doesn’t grow on trees?” Well, it’s very true, especially in EMS agencies. As a growing agency, every penny counts and should be accounted for. Whether your agency runs on tax dollars or patient funds, staying on top of where your money is going is very important.

One of the most time-consuming, manual processes in the EMS industry is generating employee schedules. Your scheduler may know his or her way around Excel better than anyone in the agency, but with an automated system, they’re able to create an unlimited amount of shift rotations and easily assign employees to them.

An EMS employee schedule generator reduces the amount of time spent constructing and circulating employee schedules by doing the heavy lifting. Once shift rotations have been put into place, assigning employees to current and future shifts is easily completed with just a few clicks. Automating your current scheduling processes may seem daunting, but this simple adjustment can save time and money.

Give Me a Break

According to a recent article in the Harvard Business Review, more and more people are feeling tired and lonely at work. In fact, 50% of professionals – in jobs ranging from the nonprofit sector to the medical field – are burned out. By definition, “burnout is the exhaustion of physical or emotional strength or motivation, usually as a result of prolonged stress or frustration.”

The last thing any agency wants their employees experiencing is burnout. Managing the stress levels of your employees can be a huge task to undertake, but it can improve the overall productivity of your agency. Mastering scheduling consistency while reducing employee workload is possible with the right tools.

For example, with the schedule generator, employees are able to access their upcoming shifts and plan ahead for PTO. This allows schedulers to generate and populate schedules, manage sick calls, and fill open shifts in one place. When an EMS employee schedule generator is implemented, scheduling becomes easy and intuitive.

The employee schedule generator not only fights burnout in your scheduler, but also helps your team achieve better work/life balance and feel more in control of their schedules. Updating live schedules has never been simpler to achieve in such a short period of time.

Manage Employee Overtime

Another common issue with manual scheduling processes is managing employee overtime. Overtime costs agencies thousands of dollars every year when left unmonitored. Keeping up with an accurate account of employee overtime, sick time, and normal shift hours every pay period is nearly impossible for stations using manual processes.

By adopting an automated EMS employee schedule generator, the likelihood of over scheduling an employee greatly reduces. Notifications and alerts are set up to inform the scheduler of how many hours an employee has worked before a scheduling action can take place.

To ensure that your agency is making progress with capping overtime, schedule reports can be pulled and exported via Excel file to managers with one click. Schedule reports can be configured with filters to include various variables of time and attendance records. For example, you can easily view regular time versus overtime for each employee from every past pay period. Report views can also be separated by cost center, allowing each manager to see his or her unique scheduling history.

Eliminate Time Waste with ESO Scheduling

How is your agency managing time waste every day? Do you already have an automated scheduling system in place? Does it alert schedulers when employees who are near or over their regular hour limit are about to be scheduled? If not, then ESO Scheduling could be a huge asset to your team.

This web-based scheduling tool makes managing your workforce easier than ever with features such as:

• Configurable, dynamic dashboards
• Drag-and-drop scheduling
• Flexible time-clock options
• Quick open-shift notifications
• Ad-hoc shift creation
• Message center for employees and managers
• Payroll automation

EMS professionals already work under significant daily pressure; scheduling operations shouldn’t add to the burden. An accurate and real-time view into employee workload, and easier management of all the variables that play into it, improve job satisfaction, accountability, safety, and agency readiness.

Take a product tour of ESO Scheduling now.