Emergency services exist to protect us and preserve life, but in recent years, they have been fighting another battle – to ensure they have enough staff in the right place at the right time to respond to planned and unplanned scenarios.

Currently, workforce planners can spend up to 80% of their time focusing on aspects that only have a 20% impact – in other words, they are spending most of their time reacting to day-to- day resourcing issues rather than more complex tasks that could end up having a larger impact.

Backfilling staff sickness or reacting to last-minute changes requires significant human intervention – both in terms of planning and ringing around other departments to pool resources – when in reality, this has the potential to be looked after by automated systems with pre-set rules.

This could become a reality though, as the Optimised Shift Scheduling system we are developing has the capability to provide automated solutions when unpredictable situations arise.

How could this new system work in practice?

If for example, a member of staff falls sick or a major incident is declared, duty managers will have to ring colleagues to draw in additional resources. This may involve having to put staff on overtime or pull them off rest days, which incurs higher costs.

This new 24/7 system however would be able to identify individuals who would not accrue overtime or rest day cost while automatically backfilling shifts left vacant by staff who have had to respond to the demand. This system therefore would maintain operational levels, save costs and resource planners’ time.

The system can analyse more data and permutations than a human can and can get workforce planners to a more advanced stage, where it only highlights the remaining more complex problems that still require human intervention.

The system looks across the organisation at a person’s day job, skills and qualifications and working times, and uses this data to boost efficiency and minimise disruption, as opposed to just relying on existing team members to work rest days or perform overtime.

The additional benefit is the ability to plan down to the hour (or less) rather than pre-set shifts, which will enable workforce planners to retain an agile service that they provide to the community.

Where the system hasn’t been able to provide a solution, we are also including search tools that enable workforce managers to find targeted individuals with particular skills or experiences that could cover outside their regular shifts rather than having to scroll through thousands of staff manually.

Empowering workforce planners

Having a system in place that manages everyday occurrences empowers workforce planners to consider longer-term strategic challenges and opportunities. For example, police forces can have upwards of 10,000 officers in their ranks that they need to use, while demand for ambulances continues to soar strategically, freeing up more time to look at innovative solutions.

The ambulance service for example, has traditionally resourced according to the number of ambulances it has at its disposal. Still, planners could proactively explore other ways in which they can use resources to enhance their service.

The system isn’t just about making life easier for workforce planners but the workforce too.

The new system can empower staff to swap shifts with colleagues directly, at the discretion of management, provided they have the same skill sets. This is likely to be welcomed by blue light workforces who are likely to view this as a reciprocal benefit for often working long and unsociable hours themselves.