Staff scheduling and communication in crises: public health or economic recovery?

Have you ever had to schedule staff for a job?

Very likely you have done that fully or at least in part using spreadsheets. Even today, 35% of all healthcare units still schedule staff with the good old spreadsheet. And healthcare is a sector that is very human-centered. Not having the right person at the right time at the right place could mean life or death. Literally.

Photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash

I and my medical team were all victims to a faulty system of care twelve years ago. I had a life-altering near-death experience and now know too much on the subject. Too much to sleep well. Too much to do nothing about it.

If such a sensitive tranche of the labour market is dealing with the problem like this, imagine the rest. Frustrations, waste of time and money, mediocre or outright terrible employee-employer and employee-employee relationships, job dissatisfaction, service access issues, injuries, and death are quite prevalent in all sorts of places from manufacturing to education.

Bad staff scheduling (allocations of the number cost item in healthcare: people) has led to loss of lives for patients and providers alike while also soaring the cost of the system and diminishing access to care for many. It seems like nobody can win.

Surely, not all issues can be dealt with better human resource planning but the fact of the matter is that staff scheduling is clearly a common denominator of all the above-mentioned issues.

The current Corona virus pandemic has left no aspect of our lives intact. From how we work to how we work out. The tsunami that is Covid-19 is creating large waves of change in workforce and space management too. The gig economy was growing rapidly before the pandemic. Now, work from home (WFH) or remote work are mainstream and they are here to stay. While before the pandemic only 5% of workforce truly benefited from WFH options, it is expected that more than 30% will be doing so by the end of 2021.

Photo by United Nations COVID-19 Response on Unsplash

What lies ahead is a colossal challenge of dealing with our number one enemy. And that is not the virus. Not the pandemic. But uncertainty. We must find ways to best balance public health with a rapid economic recovery.

Businesses are allowed to return to work in phases and gradually. Owners and managers who never needed to schedule their 9–5 staff are now required to do so to control the flow of staff and ensure health, safety, and compliance (e.g., physical distancing, regular disinfecting of work areas, etc.).

A manager is now responsible to be able to answer questions like: which of her 50 full-time staff are needed on Mondays vs. Fridays if all are not allowed to come to work? If Mary is tested positive for the virus, whom has she been in contact with on what days at work (simple tracing) over the past 2 weeks? In addition to planning, many need to also report on compliance too.

If you think spreadsheets for the above too, think again.

It is 2020 and yes there is Mesh AI. What is Mesh AI?

Trusted by thousands of healthcare providers, Mesh AI is the world’s leader in the Socially Intelligent Staff Scheduling (SISS) category.

Mesh AI developed by Mesh Scheduling Inc., an artificial intelligence venture based out of Kingston, Ontario, is now available to non-healthcare users for the first time in response to the Canadian government’s call to action to battle the current pandemic (see press release).

Replace spreadsheet scheduling of staff with Mesh AI automated scheduling to save more than 90% in time spent in scheduling and managing swaps and changes. Ensure health and safety of your staff, reduce errors and waste, observe and report on compliance, and ultimately provide the right balance between public health and economic recovery (monthly subscriptions with no contract are $0–250 and up). That investment pays back 40 to 100 times when you factor in time wasted in planning, reduction of productivity, and costs of errors and penalties.

How does Mesh AI work? Mesh AI democratizes staff scheduling in terms of both the process and accessibility regardless of size, complexity, and financial ability of teams. It asks the right questions first. Then it uses machine learning to 1) extract further insights relating to people and shifts, 2) model the scheduling problem at hand, and 3) pick and assist in full automation of schedules for one week or an entire year.

To reap the full gamut of Mesh AI benefits, it must be used properly. Like any other advanced tool. It is nothing short of magic when so.

This is a 10-step checklist to get the most out of Mesh AI:

1. While your success with Mesh AI is not dependent on buy-in or adoption rates among your staff, to maximize your benefits you want as many of your staff to be on the platform and using the Mesh AI web, iOS, or Android apps as possible. Urge them to accept the system invitation and log in to join. Given them incentives and deadlines to join. One incentive can be that they can only add “preferences” if they use the Mesh AI app.
2. Schedules can be created weekly, monthly, or even yearly. No matter how long your scheduling block is, plan a few weeks in advance and give your staff a deadline to enter in their approved, as well as to-be-approved vacation, on/off, and preference requests. They can even say whom they prefer to work with and not anonymously. The request types and the process to approve them are fully at the discretion of the admins and chiefs.
3. If you plan to manually schedule your team, you are ready. Approve or reject the requests that have come in so that you can go to the next step. Do not worry about soft requests. Hard requests like approved vacations are not to be broken unless you are ready for some angry people at your door or a union grievance case. Soft requests like “I like to be off Monday mornings to do my favorite yoga class” are only accommodated if all other needs and requirements are satisfied fully. If so, then why not! It’s good karma for sure.
4. If you also plan to use the MESH Auto-scheduler, the state-of-the-art proprietary AI-enabled engine, make sure you have the right “rules” and scheduling constraints added to your team. These can be picked from a rule menu with a few clicks by the team admin. You can also contact the Mesh AI Concierge service to do this for you at no extra cost. They are always there to help. If you have a rule that is not listed, don’t be sad or surprised. Like we said before, no two scheduling units are created the same. Ask your Mesh AI concierge and they would develop and add the rule for you. This is done at no cost in most cases (or depending on the level of complexity for a small one-time fee).
5. You can now press the MESH Auto-scheduler button and leave to go for a walk or a cup of coffee. Come back and see the magic of Mesh AI with your own eyes! Viola! Remember you can manually set some shifts before auto-scheduling or manually make changes after or like we note before do all of your shifts manually. The choice is all yours.
6. We do urge you to use the MESH Auto-scheduler to benefit the most. Some teams with simpler schedule structure still use the automation provided to save time on having to pick people for each shift one by one. They let the system to randomly place people in shifts. Imagine the fairness this brings to your team. Bye bye favoritism! Make sure your staff know this is how you do the shifts. No more angry people knocking on your door.
7. Check the schedule quality/analytics page to gain insights about your current scheduling period. Here you can see the distribution of shifts and hours among people, days of the week, weekends, special days, etc. This provides one more opportunity to find anomalies and make manual changes before you finalize the schedule.
8. When all the checks and edits are done, you should be ready to show off your new MESHed Schedule. Go ahead and publish the schedule to your staff. The schedule is now available on an anytime-anywhere basis to all. No lags, no errors via MESHAI apps.
9. Mesh AI also allows staff to connect their favorite calendars to the tool. As such, shifts will also appear on Outlook, Google, or Apple calendars seamlessly. Make sure you remind your staff of this function and that changes after schedule publication such as swaps are still handled easily via the Mesh AI apps.
10. Life does not happen on a schedule. Transparency and ease of schedule management are the other key benefits of Mesh AI. Show your staff how they can use the schedule analytics page to see the quality and quantity metrics for the schedule they are a part of. They can see how many weekends they do in relation to others for example. If they have a change of heart for the time of their vacation in Hawaii or get stuck at home with a nasty flu, then use the MESH Bazaar tool to let the team and managers to know in time. The entire process, be it asking the team to help out or swapping with a colleague is handled seamlessly on the Mesh AI apps. Never to worry about a thing as managers are still in full view and can decide what to control or approve. The awesome Mesh Auto-suggester also recommends the next in line for any shift that needs a swap. And by the way, absolutely every action on the platform is logged for future reference and reporting needs.

Photo by NICO BHLR on Unsplash

Mesh AI is in a busy market of many scheduling apps. What sets it apart from others, in addition to its secret scheduling algorithms and engine as well as simple user interface, is it’s approach and mission. It does not do scheduling better. It just does it “differently”. The company has been on a mission to change the way people think about shift work on both sides of the isle: employees as well as employers/admins.

Today’s scheduler is not just about scheduling people into shifts; we have done this for more than a hundred years. It is time we got to know who our colleagues are and what they need: what their work-life conflicts demand from them.

A socially intelligent staff scheduling tool creates a culture of team-work, it democratizes the time planning process, and it sends good karma all around. Mesh AI is a creator of better culture — a sustainable and harmonious culture. Let’s engineer a healthier and more productive workplace together.

Welcome to the era of Mesh AI anti-scheduler!