Workforce Scheduling Archives

Understanding digital care plans & the best care management software

Posted on: 29 October 2024

Person-centred plans help you to unlock the potential of your care services in delivering the best possible outcomes for each of your clients. No two recipients of your services are the same. They require different medication, different services, get on with different people and interact differently with you. This poses a challenge to your services, since there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Deploying the best care management software can help you in delivering digital care plans and digital care planning that puts your clients first and keeps them informed of their care journey. Download a copy of The top seven features you need from your care management software now.

Digital care plans

Moving away from paper records and manual ways of planning carries numerous benefits. By creating digital care plans, you can more easily access information, edit it and share it.

Easy access to digital care plans enables you to report on them internally to better understand patterns in your services. You can then identify what works and what doesn’t. Does a client have a better relationship with one of your care workers than any other, for example? You can then consider such factors when scheduling your care workers.

One thing the CQC looks for during inspections is the role your clients play in their own care. Maintaining digital care plans makes it easier for them to input into their own care and understand their options, including for aspects such as end of life care.

The ability to share your data on clients is also a factor considered by the CQC. Being able to share aspects of your services, such as digital care plans, demonstrates that you can support your clients in their interactions with other services. For example, if they decided to join your services from somewhere else, being able to import and understand their data will help you in providing the best possible care from the very beginning.

Putting clients in control is important. The best care management software will help you by providing a portal through which clients and their loved ones can interact with their digital care plans and your services.

Digital care planning

Digital care planning puts both you and your clients in greater control of the care journey. Feeding your digital care planning into a friends and family portal puts an arm around your clients and their loved ones. Offering such transparency of your services, past, present and future, is impossible with paper records stored in an office.

Clear communication with your care workers is another vital step in delivering outstanding person-centred care to your clients. The best care management software can support your digital care planning with a mobile app. Through this, you can make your digital care plans visible to care workers as and when they need them. At each visit, you can provide clear instructions as to expected time of visit, access and medication required to be administered.

As your care workers work through their visits, they can record outcomes as they go. With real-time visit information available to you, you can then update the client’s portal accordingly, reassuring their loved ones that visits have happened.

Complete digital care planning in this way, from initial plan creation to scheduling care workers to recording visit outcomes, provides you with a complete audit trail of your services. This will make life easier when it comes to CQC inspections, for example. You will be in a strong position to simply make your digital care planning available to inspectors as part of their inspection.

How the best care management software can help you

By having all your data in one place, it makes access and transparency more straightforward. Who did what, where and when? The best care management software will enable easy interrogation of your digital care planning.

It should also be flexible to yours and your clients’ needs. No two clients are the same, nor are two care services. Being able to implement the digital care plans that you and your clients need is imperative in any outstanding care service.

Digital care plans are just one facet of how the best care management software will assist your services. Digital care planning, however, is one of the most important since it outlines how you deliver care to your clients. Ease and transparency are essential. Your software should support this.

We’ve written a free to download white paper outlining the top seven features that the best care management software should provide. From digital care plans to financial management, it should underpin your outstanding services.

Why not take a look? It’s free to download here.

How can care management software underpin outstanding person-centred care?

Posted on: 24 October 2024

Person-centred care planning and delivery is the backbone of any outstanding care service. It’s something that the CQC actively looks for when conducting inspections, a hallmark of quality care services. From planning and delivering to putting your clients in control of the care they receive, how can you best deliver person-centred care? Download a copy of The top seven features you need from your care management software now.

Person-centred care starts with the person

It’s obvious to point out, but the best way of delivering person-centred care is by involving them. Understanding each client’s medical and care needs is one thing, but how involved are they in the process of the care they receive?

A central record for each client is essential. A care management system can support you in this by providing an easy to create and easy to edit record for every client. When they enter your service, being able to understand their medical record and the exact care they need collaboratively with them is imperative. You can then provide this information to your care workers ahead of and during visits, ensuring that the right care is administered at the right time.

But people’s needs evolve over time. From new prescriptions to changes in preferences, keeping the care you provide to each client up to date is vital. It is also important to be able to share their data with third parties and other providers for any care they receive outside of your services. A care management system can support you in easily and securely sharing relevant data in line with data protection regulations.

The needs and desires of your clients may also change over time. In a lot of care settings, aspects such as end of life often need to be considered. Putting your clients in control of this process is essential. Every client deserves a bespoke care plan and the dignity and respect to make their own decisions.

Involve their loved ones in their person-centred care

In a lot of cases, your clients will have loved ones who are actively interested in the care you provide to them. Reassuring them of upcoming and completed visits, the activities and tasks undertaken, as well as any actions to be taken, is a great way of involving them and evidencing how person-centred you are being.

This can be achieved through the provision of a friends and family portal. Your care management software should support you in establishing this, making simple, secure logins available to authorised users to access a client’s care plan. This is also a great way of getting feedback from your clients on the services they are receiving from you.

Users logging on to the portal can see upcoming and completed visits and obtain information such as medication administered and to be administered. A portal is also a great way of receiving input from family members too, where small details or observations around tweaking your care planning can prove really transformative for the person you support.

Understanding clients’ preferences

A simple way of going above and beyond in providing person-centred care to your clients is to understand their preferences. The CQC notes that these should be recorded once and shared with relevant stakeholders across your care service to avoid duplication of questions with clients.

This helps to add a human touch to their care. If, for example, you have someone who owns cats, this could be something that could be discussed with them during their visits.

Also, if they have upcoming life events, such as a birthday, prompting this information to your care workers means that it’s easy for them to mention and take into consideration. Understanding your clients and sharing this type of understanding with your care workers can deliver excellent outcomes.

Your care management software can help you with the provision of a mobile app for your care workers. They can access visit information and see details such as birthdays and interests in the app as they go about their visits.

Continuity of care is another important means of providing person-centred care. Clients will naturally establish relationships with certain care workers. By rostering care workers consistently to clients, you can provide this continuity.

Again, your care management software should help with this. Making rostering easier, technology can suggest ‘best fit’ allocations of care workers to care plans, considering not only relevant skills and experience, but also factors such as them having a positive relationship with a care worker.

Conclusion

There are several factors that play directly into providing outstanding person-centred care. From understanding the client and their medical needs, to sharing this information with your care workers and rostering the right staff to the right clients, person-centred care requires research, effort and consistency.

Care management software can underpin this process. Creating a central record of each client makes understanding them and their bespoke needs easier. Equally, a central record of each care worker facilitates smoother alignment of your care plans and your staff rosters.

It’s one thing providing person-centred care, and another evidencing it. When CQC inspections inevitably come around, being able to display your care planning, rosters, client visit history and records of communication, you can more easily demonstrate to external stakeholders that your care service puts its clients first.

Every client deserves their own bespoke care plan. Every client deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. Ensuring this happens can be easier than you might think.

We’ve covered this and more in our latest white paper which outlines the top seven features the best care management software should provide to you. It’s free to download, so why not take a look?

The Care Show 2024 – the evolving role of care management technology

Posted on: 17 October 2024

There are several issues at the forefront of the minds of those involved in the care industry right now. From managing CQC inspections to coping with increasing vacancies in the sector, there are several key issues to traverse. Throw in data security and the need to digitise care records and it can appear an overwhelming to do list. Alongside evolving concerns, however, are evolving solutions. There is an increasingly prevalent role being played by care management technology in the care sector. We wanted to round up a few key issues from the 2024 Care Show and look at how they can be addressed.

CQC inspections

Finding a popular regulator in any industry is difficult, but there’s a widespread challenge across the care sector in understanding the Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) single assessment framework (SAF).

The outbreak of the global Covid pandemic saw a shift to a risk-based approach. The number of completed CQC inspections is yet to reach pre-pandemic levels. This has left some care providers with a rating of ‘requires improvement’ hanging over them for a number of years. This has a knock-on effect on client confidence and the wider business.

When it comes to inspections, it was clear across the Care Show that there’s dissatisfaction and misunderstanding of the SAF, too.

How can care management technology help?

Whilst care management technology can do nothing to alter the rate of inspections, it can help care providers get into position for them. If all your care plans, records and outcomes are recorded in a central system, it makes the process of presenting evidence to the CQC much easier.

When it comes to answering specific questions, having all the information easily available reduces the effort in answering them.

Digitising social care

“70% of providers have digital social care records. This is expected to reach 80% by March 2025,” says Peter Skinner, programme director, digitising social care at the NHS.

Technology is accepted as having a crucial role for care providers and their clients. More links need to be established between care providers and the NHS. Care management technology is a key enabler in getting people back into a residential setting following hospital visits. It’s also a key enabler in equipping NHS staff with the right information and context on a client when they have to visit hospital.

The NHS has built standard data capture, the market now needs to understand how it can be used. It’s a two-way journey: admissions info for NHS staff and discharge info back to providers. Joining these up will create efficiencies and a better process for people receiving care. The standardised data set exists at a national level, making it easy to access for everyone with a single access point.

It’s important to maintain standards for providers accessing technology. The NHS is driving interoperability and providers needs to understand what they’re buying.

How can care management technology help?

This is an obvious area in which care management technology is imperative. Maintaining paper records is inefficient and risks vital information going missing. Being able to share the digital information captured with stakeholders quickly and accurately improves care quality. Failing to act on the point of digitising care planning and records will see providers left behind.

If you’re still working manually, it’s time to speak to a care management software provider. Equally as important, you also need to understand what you’re buying and the impact it will have on your business.

Cyber security

This is perhaps another obvious area for technology, but cyber security is a genuine concern in the care industry. The process of caring for people necessitates the handling and processing of sensitive information. Such information is valuable to criminals. So, how can you best protect yourself?

One of the points raised across the Care Show was the need to continually educate your staff, from administrators to care workers. Your cyber security is only as good as your weakest link. If someone clicks on a malicious link, that can be enough to cause chaos.

How can care management technology help?

Partnering with a care management technology provider is an opportunity to gain real peace of mind with your data security. An obvious starting point is to check their security certificates for things like Cyber Essentials and ISO27001. This offers assurance that your care management technology partner is certified to the highest standards.

There are other factors to consider, such as where your data will be stored. For example, CACI use AWS to store Certa’s data. This helps to leverage Amazon’s significant security expenditure for your data.

The care workforce

There is general dismay at the attitude towards and treatment of care workers in the UK. “They are underpaid and underappreciated,” said Karolina Gerlich, CEO of The Care Workers’ Charity. “Recent pay rises of 10p per hour are unacceptable. Care workers are considered low skilled and those arriving from overseas don’t enjoy benefits such as being able to bring their own families with them.”

There is little surprise that care workers are being easily tempted away by other industries. They get similar or better pay and less stressful working conditions. It’s therefore unsurprising that vacancy rates are so high in the care sector.

Beyond that, there was discussion at the Care Show around how providers can better support their care workers. It is widely believed that more support is required, in terms of communication and specialisation. This comes back to understanding your workforce. Assigning care workers to areas that they’re really good at and really interested in is an effective way of keeping them engaged. Further focussing training for them on those areas is another positive.

Training was mentioned as something that needs to go beyond just mandatory refresher training, to courses that expand people’s professional profiles, offering them career development.

Communication is another vital thread. Considering the impact of new technology on care workers and involving them in the decision making process helps to make them feel appreciated and involved. Bringing them closer to the central team improves connection and the sense of involvement. Ultimately, if you look after your care workers, you reduce your expenditure on recruitment, especially at a time when there are more vacancies than care workers. Having a happy, consistent team of care workers will also ensure the ongoing quality and consistency of care you provide to your client.

How can care management technology help?

Care technology can support care workers in several ways. Simple additions to your care management technology such as a care worker app can help to clearly communicate with care workers and enhance lone worker safety.

It can also help you in understanding your care workers and their expertise. What do they specialise in? What are they good at? Which clients do they get on with? How can you make their day efficient and effective? How can you ensure they have all the information they need for each visit?

Care management technology can support this. You can then better roster your care workers and provide appropriate training opportunities. In the same way that no two clients are the same, nor are two care workers. They have different interests and specialities. Providing them with the opportunity to enhance their careers with you will make them more likely to stay.

The cost of recruitment is only going up and with more vacancies than care workers there is ample opportunity for care workers to explore other opportunities. Simply treating them fairly, involving them and offering training and progression is a great way to go about keeping them.

Conclusion

There were several points of interest across the Care Show. If you’re affected or concerned by any of the issues raised here, we’ve designed Certa to help you. Find out more by visiting https://www.caci.co.uk/software/certa/

Certa from CACI is a complete care management software system designed to support outstanding care delivery

Posted on: 14 October 2024

Connecting, confirming, caring: Certa from CACI is being launched to help care providers deliver outstanding, person-centred care to their clients. Certa puts all the tools that care providers need in one place, helping to handle the background administrative duties and leave managers and care workers to the task of exceptional service provision.

Leaning on more than 25 years of experience in the sector, CACI is delighted to launch Certa. Certa provides an affordable, all-in-one solution for homecare providers of all sizes, supporting them in achieving the goal of delivering outstanding person-centred care.

What is Certa?

Certa is a complete care management software solution designed for care providers. It supports the planning, delivery and management of outstanding care services with tools across care planning, rostering and financial management.

Put those you support first with smart tools to deliver person-centred care planning, whilst removing paper from your service with Certa’s digital care records. Personalise your rostering using advanced matching rules and optimisation to deliver care worker schedules through a mobile app. Record timesheets automatically to drive accurate pay and billing processes. Understand and react to service activity with Certa’s dashboards and alerting. Evidence your quality statements with Certa’s real-time reporting.

Connecting: access Certa anywhere through web and mobile, with confidence that you are working on a single source of the truth. Communicate with everyone involved at every step of the journey via messaging, apps and portals.
Confirming: have assurance that you are matching needs and preferences with the right people in the right place at the right time, are informing your care workforce effectively and are recording a true picture of activity in the field.
Caring: ultimately, you need to deliver exceptional care to those you support; Certa gives you the tools to do this allowing your service to be tailored to individual needs and highly responsive as changes occur, as well as allowing you to evidence the high quality care you provide.

Who benefits from Certa?

Clients: benefit from a fantastic, responsive service that is mindful of their needs, delivers when expected and allows easy interaction as necessary to achieve wellbeing.
Care workers: spend less time on admin and more time delivering exceptional care with tools that inform, support and protect their work.
Schedulers/Administrators: update records and match clients and care workers optimally and efficiently, whilst reacting to exceptions and alerts in an informed and responsive manner.
Managers: connect with all service stakeholders, gain insight into every area of your organisation, make decisions based on fact, be confident with your finances and evidence high quality services.

For more information regarding Certa please visit www.caci.co.uk/certa.

Automating competency management: effective, efficient, accurate

Posted on: 23 May 2024

Having the ability to automate your competency management process enhances your workforce scheduling, improving output and safety

When assigning staff to tasks and schedules, understanding their core competencies is essential. As a stark and wholly unfair example, in a transport organisation you wouldn’t assign an accountant to drive a train. Nor would you ask a train driver to look over your accounts. Understanding an individual’s skills, training and experience is essential. It’s essential to the smooth running of your services and the safety of your workers and end users. Competency management is central to this.

Running schedules in a live and constantly evolving environment such as transport is difficult. There’s the basic schedule to adhere to. Then there are events, often beyond your control, which can curtail even the best laid plans. Being able to respond to these unforeseen circumstances swiftly and accurately is the difference between minimising service disruption and lengthy delays or cancelations.

This goes beyond transport, too. In construction, for example, if there is an accident on site or work isn’t carried out to the required standard, it can cause delays and impact the cost of the project.

The most reliable way of minimising such incidents is by having the right people in the right place at the right time. Your competency management framework plays a vital role in this. It achieves this not only by ensuring staff are trained, skilled and experienced, but also by being made transparent and available across your organisation. The link between training, assessment and scheduling needs to be seamless. Information must be available in real-time and events responded to accordingly.

What does real-time competency management look like?

Automation is key here. Let’s take the example of a train driver being assessed. Their ongoing competence is paramount to the smooth and safe running of services. Regular assessments need to be scheduled, conducted and reported on.

Driver A is due for their assessment. The assessor needs to be notified of the need to assess them and they will then go about conducting the assessment. Once the assessment is complete, they will then need to record the outcome of it. If Driver A has passed the assessment, this information needs to be made available to the driver, their management team and the scheduling team. In this scenario, it’s a case of confirming business as usual.

But what if Driver A fails to pass their assessment? In this scenario, further training may be required as remedial action to rectify their error. If the assessor notes Driver A as having failed, there needs to be a swift chain reaction to this. Driver A must be notified, their managers too, plus the scheduling team. Driver A may need to be removed from duty until such a time that they have undertaken the requisite training. This means, therefore, that the training team must be notified, too, with a view to booking Driver A in for training asap.

The scheduling team will then need to arrange to have another driver cover any shifts that they are booked in for. This triggers its own chain of communication, impacting another driver and their ongoing shifts. Regulations around working hours must be factored in and adhered to.

Automating this process makes it more efficient. Information, rather than being siloed by department, can be shared electronically at the point of input. This means that the driver, their managers, the scheduling team and the training department can all act quickly.

How do organisations automate their competency management?

This is a process that Transport for London (TfL) operates through CACI’s Cygnum software. Assessors are assigned to a list of tube drivers who need assessing, they can see their routes and timings and meet drivers at a station that best suits them. The results are recorded instantly and follow-up activities are automatically triggered.

Assessors access a priority list of drivers on the go through Cygnum. They can see where drivers are due or coming up for assessment. This means they can prioritise accordingly. Using the Cygnum Mobile app, assessors can record results on the go, in real time.

Obviously mobile reception can be an issue on sections of the London Underground. Where this is the case, results are stored offline on the app to be uploaded as soon as possible once reception is available again.

With results recorded in or near to real time, TfL’s training and scheduling teams have accurate and up to date information available to them. For the training team, their list of drivers is demand driven, so those drivers who need to receive training most are put to the front of the queue. This minimises frontline absences.

Ongoing training can be enhanced via automation too. Regular checks, from safety briefings to eyesight checks need to be conducted and recorded. Sending reminders and auto-booking people onto courses makes for a smoother process.

Network Rail operates its training management programme through Cygnum. This enables Network Rail to automate vast swathes of its training operation. Mandatory courses are booked in advance, attendance is accurately monitored and results are recorded and shared across the organisation.

The automation of this enables Network Rail to not only keep abreast of its training courses and who needs to attend, but also to inform schedulers of their outcomes. This is essential in keeping the right people in the right place at the right time.

Conclusion

Whilst automation of competency management can be incredibly useful across any transport organisation, it is only as reliable as the data entered into your system. Bringing data together from across your organisation is essential. Where data become siloed, its usefulness is stunted. Creating a single view requires the input of every department.

Automation can make the crucial task of keeping the right people in the right place at the right time more straightforward. It can alert you and your staff of required upcoming training. Assessments can be scheduled well in advance with results logged instantly. Training can be booked when it’s needed, including in a demand-led fashion. Again, making the outcomes of sessions available to the wider business instantly facilitates accurate and timely decision making.

Ultimately, automation of competency management underpins accurate scheduling. Assigning tasks to staff safe in the knowledge that they are the right people to perform such tasks is essential in transport. In any industry with moving parts, being able to make changes in a live environment is also essential. When schedulers and administrators have to manually trawl through records to evidence the changes they wish to make, it wastes valuable time. Being able to instantly understand someone’s suitability for a task, against their core competencies, skills, experience and working patterns, saves time and keeps services moving.

Automation is undoubtedly challenging to achieve, but the results are well worth it.

Technology and its impact on risk in the rail industry

Posted on: 16 May 2024

How technology is enhancing safety for rail workers at organisations like Network Rail and Transport for London (TfL)

Whilst the UK is in the enviable position of having one of the safest rail networks in the world, that’s not to say that things couldn’t be improved upon. Technology is playing a major role in advancing safety standards and enhancing safety for the rail network’s workforce and passengers. This case study looks at how Network Rail and Transport for London (TfL) are utilising CACI’s Cygnum software to support their efforts in managing the training and competency of their workforce.

Beyond the immediate safety of the workforce, enhancements in training and competency management serve to reduce overarching risk. Risk takes on many forms in the rail industry. Mistakes can lead to health and safety incidents; they can also result in service disruption and delayed projects. If staff aren’t appropriately trained, mistakes are more likely to occur. If staff aren’t assessed, there’s no knowledge and reporting on frontline delivery.

Capturing data and appropriately acting upon it is vital to a successful training and competency management framework. Being able to schedule training and assessments effectively and efficiently, whilst also being able to capture outcomes in real-time, helps organisations to maintain core competencies across their workforce and provide opportunities for career progression, an expansion in the available pool of skills and also the opportunity for re-training and mandatory ongoing training where necessary.

Training management

Training management takes many guises within an organisation such as Network Rail, which has a workforce of over 48,000 people. From mandatory ongoing training courses to more advanced, career progressing initiatives, Network Rail caters for its workforce with the provision of thousands of courses every year across 11 national training centres.

Running this process efficiently is paramount in achieving the desired training outcomes. Where manual processes are involved in inviting staff to mandatory sessions and checking that they have attended, mistakes inevitably creep in. This can result in staff attending the wrong courses, being sent to the wrong location or not attending.

Implementing a technology system can help to alleviate such issues, with automated checking of course prerequisites, auto-booking of staff to mandatory courses at defined intervals, auto-logging attendance on the day (plus any results that are required) and creating efficiency and consistency across the process. This leaves the more manual aspects to exceptions and more complex arrangements.

Furthermore, a robust training management programme enables organisations to diversify and enhance the range of skills available to them within their existing workforce. If places on courses are free, then they can be offered out to the wider workforce. This improves efficiency by helping to keep courses full. Making best use of available training resources by ensuring that courses are run to capacity and any vacant spaces are offered to interested employees who would benefit from the training opportunity, continuously enhances the core competencies and career opportunities available to your workforce.

Each training course costs money to run, from the trainer, the time taken by the employee and the room and facilities used. Finding a way of maximising the results of this expenditure is crucial. With improved visibility of class utilisation via Cygnum, Network Rail can offer out vacant course places to the wider rail industry, thereby supporting other organisations in their training needs and helping to support the wider safety standards of the rail industry.

Competency management

Closely linked to training is competency management. TfL utilises Cygnum to support the ongoing competency management of its 4,500+ Underground drivers. At a basic level, competency management is ensuring that staff are competent to perform their roles. For example that they are appropriately trained and qualified for the tasks they are undertaking. Beyond that, competency management helps organisations to understand the skills at their disposal across their workforce.

It also ties into training where mandatory ongoing training is required to maintain competence for a role. For train drivers, this includes basic aspects such as eyesight checks. It also establishes the triggering of mandatory training where mistakes have been made out in the field. Similarly to Network Rail, TfL can then schedule training at the point of a result being logged. This ensures that all drivers have access to relevant and necessary training to ensure ongoing competence.

To further have assurance on driver competency, TfL carries out ‘on the job’ staff assessments. These are scheduled by Cygnum automatically based on business rules and the driver’s duty rota. Both the assessor and driver are notified instantly. This reduces the manual effort in arranging assessments, making the process more efficient.

When an assessor assesses a driver, they can capture the outcomes on their mobile device via Cygnum’s mobile app, Cygnum Mobile. Results are uploaded to the Cygnum database and any follow up activities are automatically triggered as a result. Cygnum Mobile also includes offline data capture capability, to mitigate poor mobile reception when operating underground.

Improving workforce safety and reducing risk

By running robust training and competency management programmes, Network Rail and TfL are better positioned to monitor the skills of their workforce and ensure that appropriately trained and competent personnel are operating their services. This further helps them to monitor the safety of their networks by ensuring that all operators are compliant with industry safety standards.

Of course, no system can eradicate human error, but technology can help in prioritising workforce safety whilst at the same time encouraging career progression and the expansion of available skills within the workforce. Where the workforce is trained and regularly assessed, incidents can be kept to a minimum and when they do occur, understanding why is made easier. This is because the competencies, training, skills and experience of those involved can be quickly understood in reporting on incidents.

Having a complete picture of skills, experience and the results of regular assessments also supports administrative and scheduling staff and accurately and fairly assigning tasks to appropriate members of the workforce. Having a central view of core competencies set against bespoke business rules facilitates a degree of automation in scheduling, which reduces manual effort, improves accuracy and makes it easier to handle exceptions. Creating a central view of staff skills enhances workforce safety and reduces risk, since it reduces the likelihood of staff being assigned to tasks to which they’re not suitable for.

For more information on Cygnum, please visit: https://www.caci.co.uk/software/cygnum/

Environment Agency to use CACI’s Cygnum solution to prepare for and respond to flooding and environmental incidents across England

Posted on: 23 April 2024

CACI is delighted to announce that its Cygnum software will be used by the Environment Agency as a logistics planning tool to schedule its workforce and assets in the preparation of and response to incidents across England ranging from small pollution incidents to widespread flooding. Cygnum will support the Environment Agency in scheduling the 7,000 staff members who have an incident role.

The Environment Agency has around 450 staff on duty 24/7 ready to respond to incidents. These roles cover specific or multiple geographical locations or are nationwide. In the event of larger incidents, the Environment Agency needs to scale up its response, with more people involved and requiring the movement of people and equipment across the country to support them. The Cygnum solution will be used to plan both the duty roster of the workforce as well as the rostering of specific incidents as they occur. This will include managing the sharing of staff and equipment between teams where necessary.

“We’re delighted that the Environment Agency has chosen our Cygnum solution as its logistics planning tool,” says Ollie Watson, group business development director at CACI. “We have extensive experience in delivering solutions for largescale workforce management requirements and the team is excited to be supporting the Environment Agency in achieving these important outcomes.”

For more information on Cygnum and how it supports businesses, please visit: https://www.caci.co.uk/software/cygnum/

Scheduling – getting the most from workforce management in the transport industry

Posted on: 6 March 2024

Having the right people in the right place at the right time sounds easy. In largescale transport organisation, effective scheduling is crucial

At the heart of workforce management sits the simple sounding task of scheduling. Your organisation has shifts to fulfil and a pool of workers to fulfil them. Add staff to the rota and away you go. Such shift patterns can be sacrosanct across organisations of any size, providing clarity to workers, management and administrators alike. In largescale transport organisations, however, there are several moving parts to consider and shift patterns can be thrown off course by anything from weather to equipment failure and cancellations in the supply chain.

This blog aims to take a closer look at scheduling in transport organisations. It’s a topic we’ve covered in greater detail in our recent white paper, Tackling workforce management complexities in transport. If you would like to explore the topic in greater detail, you can download a free copy here.

There are myriad tasks that need completing across the transport industry. The complication introduced to the scheduling process often requires a lot of manual work by administrators and schedulers. People fall ill, take holidays and external events can throw a schedule completely off kilter.

Automation in workforce management

Automation of scheduling can greatly reduce the administrative burden. At its most prosaic, automation can simply assign workers to shifts in advance. This can be set out indefinitely, with new workers swapped in for departing/unavailable members of staff easily. Such a process can consider your bespoke business rules and any other factors such as the working time directive and fatigue management.

Where automation can lend a vital hand is in times of strain. We’ve seen examples, notably during the Covid pandemic, of vast swathes of a workforce being absent at once. Where a manual process exists, this resulted in inevitable cancellations of services. With carefully configured automation, it is possible to be more agile in the face of disruption.

Where a worker is absent, having a central system and a central view of your entire workforce enables swift consideration of replacements. This works for smaller examples, too. For example, if a train is delayed and members of crew onboard it are required to meet another service which they will now miss, how can this be handled?

An automated process enables identification of other members of staff who are nearby and can be reassigned, whilst at the same time handling all communications with staff members. The staff who have been delayed can then be reassigned to other tasks, ensuring that their shift isn’t wasted.

Variable demand and moving parts

Another factor to consider in the transport industry is variable demand and moving parts. A high level example of this is the change in train timetables during the Christmas period. Fewer customers means less demand for services, therefore, services can be reduced to ensure more efficient use of the network and staff time.

A more short-term example of this is in shipping. Where a port is expecting a shipment, staff need to be prepared to meet it to initiate the unloading and loading of it. Variation is frequent in such a scenario, since ships can be diverted at a moment’s notice to other ports due to factors such as storms. Another example would be the blockage of the Suez Canal. This can leave a port with a full roster of staff without a function to fulfil. This is a waste of time, money and staffing resources.

Mapping out the changes caused by variable demand in a central system can help to understand its implications. Factors such as cost can be calculated and your response to it can be better informed. Understanding where the risks of variable demand are most likely to occur can help mitigate its impact.

Another example is with revenue protection officers on trains. Understanding the demand for services helps to better utilise them. There’s little point, for example, scheduling ticket inspectors during rush hour to major stations, since moving through the train is all but impossible. Similarly, there are more likely to be barriers at major stations, so working out the best deployment of such staff is more likely to realise the ultimate aim of their work.

Overlaying tasks onto shifts

Establishing a schedule is one thing. Rosters can be worked out well in advance and communicated to staff. But what happens when they show up on the day? Often the set number of employees turn up and discover the specifics of their tasks at that point.

Utilising a workforce management system such as Cygnum helps organisations to understand the specifics of the tasks that need be fulfilled during a shift. This helps organisations to better prepare aspects such as equipment required, time needed to complete the task and where exactly they need to be.

This helps to drive better understanding and efficiency through shifts and tasks. Matching specific skills and experiences to not only shifts, but also tasks, better ensures that the right people are performing the right tasks.

Conclusion

Scheduling can be a complicated and nuanced process, especially across largescale organisations. With several moving parts, variable demand, unpredictable disruptions and the usual ebb and flow of workforce absences, managing the process can be extremely complicated. This can result in inefficiency and poor service delivery.

Introducing automation, clear communication and overlaying tasks onto shifts helps to better understand your workforce the tasks required of them and more accurately assign staff to tasks based on their skills, experience, training, availability and geographic location.

This is a topic that we’ve explored in greater detail in our recent white paper, which you can download freely here. Alternatively, if you would like more information on how Cygnum can help you with your workforce management requirements, please visit our website.

Reducing risk in the transport industry through workforce management

Posted on: 21 February 2024

Reducing risk entails several factors. Most pertinently, worker safety. Rules and regulations exist to protect workers, from health and safety directives to working time directives, covering working conditions to fatigue. Then there’s risk to projects and tasks. If they are done improperly, then tasks need to be redone. This impacts overarching projects, both in terms of time and cost. Of course, accidents and mistakes happen. Building in mitigation for such events is prudent. But what if you can identify patterns and head off errors before they happen? Competency management, as part of a robust workforce management process, can help.

Workforce management – training

Training management is essential across largescale workforces. From mandatory ongoing courses, refresher courses and training staff in new skills to upskill your workforce and offer career progression, having a robust training programme in place forms the backbone of this.

By linking training to other areas of your workforce management, such as assessments and scheduling, it makes it possible to identify skills gaps across your workforce. To reduce the risk of these gaps impacting upon project and service delivery, you can appropriately train existing members of staff to fill these gaps.

It also makes it possible to utilise your training programme to focus on specific areas and tasks where mistakes are occurring. By pooling data from accidents and assessments, you can identify repeat errors. In doing so, you can then tailor your approach to training to better prepare staff for areas in which, statistically, they are most likely to pose a risk to themselves and overarching projects.

Workforce management – assessments

Knowing that staff have the appropriate qualifications, skills, training and experience is one thing. But how are they actually fulfilling the tasks to which they have been assigned? Regular, ongoing assessments of your workforce are crucial. This is both from a safety and a service delivery perspective.

From a safety perspective, many roles within the transport industry pose a safety risk. From infrastructure workers to drivers, the risk of getting things wrong can be catastrophic. It’s prudent to check in to ensure that tasks are being conducted properly.

From a service delivery perspective, mistakes can result in shoddy work. This means that it needs to be redone, which costs time and money, impacting upon project timelines and budgets.

This extends to maintenance, too. We regularly see on the rail network, for example, things such as signal failures which result in delays and cancellations. Regular assessments of infrastructure are vital to repairing the roof whilst the sun is shining.

Overarching planning to manage risk

Proper, robust planning builds in sufficient time to complete tasks, with enough room for reasonable error. People make mistakes, external factors such as the weather can waylay you and where there are several moving parts. Things don’t always come together as you’d hope. Mitigating for this by building it into your planning is sensible.

When it comes to specific tasks, however, granular detail is important. When scheduling your workforce, workers can be assigned to shifts on a rolling basis ad infinitum. But how can the specifics and the complexity of each shift and its tasks be considered? How can these then be communicated with staff?

Using a central system with the ability to overlay such complexity onto shifts can drive efficiency and greater control of the overarching project and its processes. It can be established according to your bespoke business rules and configured to factor in elements such as regulations and directives.

Understanding what will happen during a shift is important. If maintenance needs to be performed, being able to communicate exactly what equipment is required, the nature of the task and the location helps to prepare people. As the process continues, being able to intelligently alter task timelines based upon previous completion times and rates enables a more accurate scheduling of tasks. If, for example, you have set aside three hours for the completion of a task but staff are regularly completing it in two hours, then future timelines can be adjusted accordingly.

This helps to drive a more complete understanding of your projects and how your staff are performing against timelines and tasks. This in turn helps to mitigate the risk of work running over time, since you can rely on a robust database of previous work to inform future projects.

Conclusion

Finally, the regulatory aspect is crucial. Things such as the working time directive exist to combat elements such as fatigue. A central database that can further call upon the geographic location of staff can help to more efficiently assign them to tasks. If someone is 20mins away from the location of a task, it makes more sense to assign them to it than someone 1hr away. Since travelling time is considered as a factor in fatigue management, it’s an extremely inefficient use of time to swallow it up on travelling times.

Managing risk extends across the entirety of the transport industry, from workforce safety to service delivery. With so many moving parts – risks – being able to navigate them and efficiently and reliably match those moving parts to your targets is essential to achieving the ultimate goals of your organisation. A well trained, regularly assessed and robustly scheduled workforce forms the backbone of this.

The technology exists to help largescale transport organisations to gain greater control of their workforce management. From training and assessments to scheduling, having a single view of your workforce facilitates automation, insight and, ultimately, efficiency. It’s a topic we’ve explored in more detail in our recent white paper, Tackling workforce management complexities in transport. You can download your free copy here.

Requirement discovery – paving the way to project success

Posted on: 9 August 2023

Focussing on outcomes is essential to the success of any project. What does the project need to achieve? It sounds like an obvious question, but time and again we see vague notions of what the outcomes are. Procuring a technology system isn’t the end of the process. It needs to be designed, structured, implemented and have a plan put in place for its ongoing success post go-live. How will the people using the new system be trained? What, ultimately, will success look like? A robust requirement discovery phase of the project helps both parties to understand one another and outline the objectives of the project.

At CACI, we utilise our proprietary FUSION project delivery methodology with all of our customers and for our internal projects. This helps us to keep work on track, whilst further enabling us to continually learn from project implementation to continuously improve our own processes. Spending that time early in the lifecycle of the project to fully understand what it is you need to achieve enables us to set clear goals and create a point of reference for the remainder of the project.

Here we can establish what success will look like, creating a baseline of requirements and their acceptance criteria for sign off.

Requirement discovery building knowledge and insight

The success of any project is underpinned by the people involved. Getting both teams together so that they can build knowledge and insight of how each other works is invaluable in putting in place the groundwork for a successful project.

The definition of success and acceptance criteria created during the requirement discovery phase of the project acts as a reference point for the rest of the project. The requirements laid out at this stage are designed to establish what you need from the project, not describe the solution. It is important, therefore, to prioritise your requirements, understand what you want to achieve and set out your acceptance criteria at this stage. Who needs to do what, by when? What will tick your boxes in order to advance the project?

The involvement of key roles such as the project sponsor are vital in ensuring buy-in from key personnel and following up on your requirements to ensure that they are appropriately managed.

This isn’t just about managing the change in technology that you’re experiencing, there’s the human element to consider, too. We covered this in our previous blog about change management, but it’s worth reiterating since the requirement discovery phase further enables discussion around the tangible impact to the people who are affected by the change. Getting buy-in from everyone early in the project is good practice and the discovery phase is vital in building that knowledge and insight that will facilitate a smoother change management process when the (agreed upon) time is right.

The importance of epics in requirement discovery

Epics are an important way of breaking down a larger body of work, such as a software implementation, into user stories that work towards the intended outcome of the overarching project. This helps both teams to break their work down whilst continually working towards the bigger picture.

CACI helps customers in creating these, since they enable us to focus on your outcomes, putting them front and centre of the project. We’re providing the solution, but your required outcomes are bespoke to you. Creating epics enables us to focus on this during the process of delivering your solution.

The creation of epics also enables us to come back to your requirements and how we intend to achieve them. With the overarching project broken down into smaller sprints of work, it enables us to focus on the delivery of key requirements across the project.

How CACI can help you deliver the outcomes you need

The purpose of the discovery phase is to build insight and understanding between our team and yours. Reading requirements on a tender is one thing, but how will they look in reality? We aim to embed our team within yours, which is why discovery is so important. This enables us to tailor the solution to your needs, with your required outcomes at the forefront of the project implementation.

We’ve seen all manner of projects in our time. Most have gone well, but we’ve also been involved in projects where shortcuts have been taken and the project has been executed without the involvement of those who will be most impacted by the project: that is to say, those who will be using the solution day in, day out.

Discovery is such an important step in the project. It enables us to create an agreed path forwards against set deliverables, acting as a point of reference as the project advances. The project lifecycle can be difficult to manage, but by breaking it down and understanding what you need the solution to deliver, it makes it easier to pinpoint where things are veering off course.

Our team of project managers have seen it all before, across a multitude of industries. Selecting a technology provider and their solution is one thing, but what happens next is so important to the solution being successful for you. We always strive to place your outcomes first, to ensure that the solution and the project work to deliver what you need.

Learn more about CACI’s requirement discovery, see our brochure here.