ClairVia™ Customers Applaud New Open Shift Management Features as Tools to Improve Staff Scheduling and Management Efficiency, and Increase Employee Collaboration and Satisfaction

Business Wire, August 13, 2007

DURHAM, N.C. -- AtStaff's new Open Shift Management features are being praised by the company's ClairVia[TM] software customers as capabilities that will improve scheduling and management efficiency while increasing employee collaboration and satisfaction.

Open Shift Management incorporates two features -- Shift Opportunities and Shift Swapping -- now available to each healthcare organization employee using his or her personalized, Web-based dashboard in the ClairVia software.

Employees using ClairVia dashboards are now able to sign up for open shifts (Shift Opportunities) and exchange shifts with co-workers (Shift Swapping), in addition to accessing the current month's schedule, gaining the status of time-off and vacation requests, viewing competency expirations, and communicating with managers and co-workers.

While early in their implementation of Open Shift Management, three ClairVia healthcare organization customers -- Crittenton Hospital Medical Center in Rochester Hills, Mich., Carle Foundation Hospital in Urbana, Ill., and BryanLGH Medical Center in Lincoln, Neb., -- are expressing their strong support of its benefits.

CLAIRVIA'S SHIFT OPPORTUNITIES FEATURE

The Shift Opportunities feature provides managers with an automated means of quickly filling open shifts, and enables employees to earn valuable incentives for signing up to work them.

When employees access their ClairVia dashboard, they can quickly view a current list of open shifts they are qualified to work. The list is updated in real time as employees make selections and new open shifts come available.

Managers have great flexibility to reward those who sign up with actual monetary compensation or award points that can be redeemed for pay, merchandise, and/or schedule preferences.

Depending on manager preference, employees can select one of two options for each offered shift opportunity: Auto-Approved and Consider Me. Auto-Approved opportunities are accepted by the first qualified employee to sign up, Consider Me opportunities allow employees to present themselves for consideration (bid for each shift) and a manager or staffing office representative then selects the employee(s) to work the shift.

Benefits to management

The Carle Foundation Hospital in Urbana, Ill., recently introduced Shift Opportunities in some of its nursing units (with plans to extend it to all patient care units), and managers there have already noticed significant benefits.

"The most important benefit to me so far has been the time savings," says Lisa Barker, scheduling system coordinator at Carle Foundation Hospital. "The feature literally cuts the time in half that it was taking us to implement our Carle 1st system. It also eliminates the hassles of phone calls from the managers about what is posted or what needs to change with a posting."

Carle 1st is the facility's incentive plan that rewards qualifying employees (those who have worked up to their FTE status) with extra pay if they sign up for open shifts.

"Our old system for posting Carle 1st shifts took several minutes per open shift to post, and that doesn't count the time to run a report to see where the holes were," Barker explains. "Shift Opportunities is so much faster and easier.

"I think it will reduce open shifts more than our old system. We've already had an employee sign up through Shift Opportunities who had never picked up a Carle 1st shift before."

At BryanLGH Medical Center in Lincoln, Neb., staffing coordinators there expect Shift Opportunities will save considerable administrative time and effort.

"As easy and beneficial as I believe Shift Opportunities will be for employees (BryanLGH is currently implementing the feature to 130 employees, with plans to roll it out to more than 1,000 staff members), I feel its greatest benefit will be for our nurse managers and staffing office," emphasizes Deb Lohmeier, staffing assistant at BryanLGH. "Handling sign-ups for extra shifts is the last paper-based manual process of this type here, and we won't have to do it anymore. Nurse managers will no longer have to review the paper sign-up sheet, and call the staffing office to inform them who signed up. And the staffing office won't have to manually enter the shift information into the ClairVia system."

Adding to the efficiency, Lohmeier says, is that BryanLGH will be using the Auto-Approved function in Shift Opportunities, which requires no manager intervention.

Benefits to employees

"Simply by providing such ease of use, Shift Opportunities is an asset for employees," says Barker, referring to the automation that eliminates manual steps and phone calls. "Employees have had the ability to pick up extra shifts and increase their income, but this feature just makes it very easy to participate."

Latoria Jake, a scheduling assistant at Carle Foundation, says employees will appreciate the convenient, online access and fact that the lists are updated in real time.

"This is a great asset to our staff because they'll not only be able to review open shifts at home, but they'll be able to view how all selections affect their schedules and fit together," says Jake. "It's also great to get instant confirmation of their selection, rather than having to wait for an answer or for their request to be handled manually."