Introduction
Field health and aged care workers are busy people and need to make quick decisions every day. The COVID‑19 pandemic has also made their jobs much more challenging, both in the field and at work in fixed locations.
How can IT leaders enable their staff to be more efficient and compliant without technology getting in the way? The answer lies in better workforce automation and systems that enable staff to spend more time supporting people and less time on administration.
Furthermore, as the research shows, high levels of administration and compliance requirements can directly impact client healthcare outcomes, which, in turn, can adversely affect the provider’s reputation.
Nearly half in sector to see growth in home-based care
With recent shifts in the regulation and the industry and custom expectations over the next two years the survey asked respondents where they see the growth in their support staff business between residential facilities based and at home care?
A strong 34% of respondents indicated they expect their at home care business to grow the most and a further 12% expect the residential business to provide the most growth taking the total to 46%. This is a solid indicator that home-based and remote care is vitally important for the future of the industry. Furthermore, 20% of respondents reported that both facility-based and at-home care should grow equally.
For companies looking to grow in the sector, they will need solutions that transcend both facility-based and at home care.
It is time for technology to keep up: 76% without modern workforce tools
To get the most out of both home and facilities-based staff, organisations must have the best technology to support them. The survey investigated the type of workforce management technology organisations are currently using and any associated gaps.
When it comes to what type of mobile workforce management tools and technology organisations currently use, nearly one in four (24%) use a specialist mobile workforce management app for staff while they are working. This leaves a high 76% of organisations without a modern workforce solution.
This is followed by 20% of organisations that do not have a dedicated app for mobile workforce management. Instead, they are using a mix of existing apps and devices which staff can use remotely. Other technologies in use include generic mobile workforce management apps and manual spreadsheets.
About 18% of organisations have staff doing field work, but the systems are office-based and are not field-enabled and hence have no mobile app functionality.
These interesting results show there is a big gap in the technology available to care providers. A specialist mobile workforce management app can provide organisations with a much more streamlined user experience and integrate data into corporate systems, which can then be used for other applications.
Best practise workforce solutions also extend the process to field workers who can then perform their duties without referring to an office-based solution.
Workforce management challenges remain: One in five have staff-tech disconnect
In addition to technology opportunities, the survey also looked at the top three challenges organisations face when it comes to mobile workforce management.
The biggest one—and a challenge in nearly 20% of organisations—is the disconnect between staff needs and technology use. While this is a perennial problem for IT in general, when it comes to caring for people, it is important to have staff who can use the technology and have their needs met by the technology.
Furthermore, the same rate of respondents identified it is difficult to track the resources needed for clients. These results show a combination of the right technology and resource tracking will go a long way to helping staff care for people better.
This is seen in a further result where 16% of respondents indicated that they do not utilise caregivers time well enough. With the right technology and resource tracking caregivers time can be better spent for caregiving and not managing technology.
Other problems include applications not being mobile-friendly in 12% of organisations and workforce management apps not integrating well in 8% of organisations. In addition to the high cost of mobile workforce management technology, 13% of respondents indicated that applications being manual and slow is a challenge.
The customer is number one: The benefits of workforce management
The research shows industry leaders recognise the challenges with workforce management, yet they are also acutely aware of the benefits.
When asked what the top three benefits their organisation stands to gain from better mobile workforce management the vision is clearly better customer service, which was the top response.
In health and aged care, the “customer” is an aged-care resident or someone receiving home-based care and this ties into having better access to technology and a better user experience for staff.
Other benefits IT and business leaders see include improved administration operations, which can be a burden for field workers, and reduced operating costs. If time is better utilised—from resource management to transport—operating costs also go down.
At 13%, respectively, higher staff utilisation and the ability to grow the business are also seen as areas of benefit from better workforce management. This is particularly the case in regulated industries where improving margins is not simply a matter of raising prices.
Margin improvement needs to come from cost efficiency and most organisations in the industry are operating on fairly small margins and the significant cost is labour, so any improvement to the workforce efficiency directly benefits the bottom line. Backoffice and labour efficiency are two of the biggest levers to improving business margins.
Digital transformation to drive positive change
When it comes to digital transformation, respondents were asked which top three digital transformation outcomes would have the most positive impact on current processes over the next 12 months.
