Calderstones NHS Foundation Trust saves time and reduces costs with Workforce Management solution

June 22, 2011 - PRLog -- SMART, a leading supplier of workforce management solutions to the NHS has been selected by Calderstones NHS Foundation Trust to provide e-Rostering, Time and Attendance and Bank Management.  The Trust has over 800 staff in clinical areas using the e-Rostering, with all clinical areas live by July 2011, followed by non-clinical staff including HR, Clinical Nurse Managers and Senior Management.  Calderstones is the only Trust to be running the SMART T&A system with SMART NHS Smartcard Readers and the NHS Smartcard. The system has been very successful and robust.  It gives total visibility of actual hours worked and feeds enhanced hours to the payroll system via the ESR interface.  This will save further admin hours as paper based systems are now automated, ultimately reducing payroll rekeying errors.

Don Terry, Project Manager at Calderstones commented, “More effective management of staffing resources will improve service delivery and ensure individuals receive appropriate and timely care, treatment and support.

“We have twelve Ward Areas which include 350 members of staff being paid via the electronic system; Managers from these areas can already see a reduction in payroll errors and queries. This now enables the release of management hours spent on administration, all of which will lead to longer term financial savings.”

Mr Terry continued, “The SMART e-Rostering, T&A and Bank will enable Calderstones to achieve our goals to achieve the right levels, skill mix and gender of staff at key times, leading to improved service, user/client and staff experience, while containing costs.”  

The Trust has 42 self rostering groups, who will all be using SMART’s Auto Roster facilities. The new system eradicates the need for timesheets, SARs forms, time owing records, annual leave reports and sickness forms by ensuring that information is recorded once only and then used for all purposes.  Staff now know that everyone is being treated the same, and can see that information in regards to TOIL (Time Owing); entitlements and generated enhancements for shifts worked are truly visible to them via the easy to use Kiosk System.

Calderstones has built a range of automated reports for Senior Management including planned Rosters for Senior Management and Reception Areas; projected Annual Leave over a fortnightly basis, planned absences, to monitor holiday and study leave and finance reports enabling actual hours to be monitored against budgets.

Tristan Spencer, Health Market Director at SMART said; “Staff costs are the biggest expense for a Health Trust which is about service delivery on the frontline. Effective management of staff resources is vital to ensure that the right mix of skills and staff is in place to provide optimum patient care. SMART e-Rostering solutions can provide the tools to achieve this.”

ENDS

NOTES TO EDITORS
About Calderstones Partnership NHS Foundation Trust

Calderstones Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, formed in 1993, was authorised as the first Learning Disabilities NHS Foundation Trust in April 2009.  Based in the Ribble Valley, Lancashire, the trust provides a specialist service to people with learning disabilities including in-patient assessment and treatment and community based services across the North West.

For more information, please visit www.calderstones.nhs.uk


About SMART
UK based and with 25 years experience, SMART is the leading provider of solutions for workforce management designed to help organisations to achieve agility and cost efficiency from their greatest asset – their people.  Utilising our own highly skilled and experienced people SMART helps companies to maximise the performance, productivity and value of their workforce.  Our solutions can assist in achieving a sustainable reduction in people costs of up to 10%, while providing a better working environment for staff.

From time and attendance through to workforce planning, scheduling, absence management and comprehensive automated reporting, the SMART solution suite offers a wide breadth and depth of functionality.  It can be fully installed on site, delivered as a managed or hosted service with a full range of support services from SMART’s own in-house consultants.  

Accessible from anywhere in the world, SMART’s web-based workforce management solutions are developed using Microsoft .NET to give a zero-footprint solution that is flexible, reliable, scalable and easy to implement, and provides an environmentally responsible option.  The data centre supports the Trees for Business Campaign and are collaborating with Brunel University to identify practical ways to recycle heat and airflow to minimise draw on the power supply, and uses optimised hardware to ensure power consumption is reduced wherever possible.


SMART in Healthcare
SMART RPC provides a simple web based solution for creating and managing Trust-wide staff rosters and time and attendance related activity.  The only Next Generation workforce management solution available today, SMART RPC has been designed by our developers to support all NHS Trust roles – a feature that is currently unique.  As well as eRostering SMART RPC encompasses Automatic Attendance Recording and Bank Administration, in one easy to use system.

As a Next Generation rostering application, SMART RPC has a host of time-saving features including Auto Roster which generates staff rosters in minutes, and alerts to managers in real time to warn of potential problems with their rosters.  In addition it provides unrivalled fairness and transparency in dealing with shift preferences of staff, helping to improve staff morale and reducing staff turnover.

SMART provides comprehensive workforce management solutions to a significant proportion of the UK Healthcare market and was selected as sole provider of e-rostering and time and attendance for the National ESR programme and has unique, proven and fully automated integration with ESR.

Over 600 organisations worldwide benefit from SMART’s solutions and services in both the private and public sectors.  Customers include Gateshead Health NHS Foundation Trust, Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust, The Dudley Group of Hospitals NHS Trust, Ocado, Gist, Habitat, Jaguar, JCB, Mandarin Oriental, Sainsbury's, Swissport, Trailfinders, Tussauds Group, and Greater Manchester Fire & Rescue Service.

For more information, please visit www.smart-workforce.com.  

For information relating specifically to the NHS sector, please visit: www.smart-rostering.co.uk

For press enquiries, please contact:
Paski Matarazzo, Marketing Manager, SMART          
Telephone: 01438 822229                
Email: paskim@smart-workforce.com             

Andreina West, PR Artistry
Telephone: 01491 639500
Email: andreina@pra-ltd.co.uk