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SPANNING THREE DECADES OF VALUE MANAGEMENT LEADERSHIP

March 21, 2002

 

THE FLEXIBLE WORK FORCE:

Staffing and Scheduling in the 21^st Century

 

Robert T. Yokl President-The HCP Group, Ltd.

Healthcare organizations’ staffing and scheduling traditionally has been inflexible, meaning that 80% of a healthcare organization’s staff is full-time employees and guaranteed a full day’s pay for a full day’s work.  Yet, more and more, a hospital’s census, operating room cases, and inpatient and outpatient volumes are erratic and unpredictable.  So, how do you staff in the 21^st century to smooth out your staffing and scheduling to match the peaks and valleys of your census and procedural volumes?

Hospitals today need flexibility, and they need to cut labor cost.  This can only be accomplished, as stated by Beverly Gerber of Training Magazines, with “…a fluid, less expensive work force that can be swelled or deflated like an accordion at a moments notice.”  One strategy to meet this goal of total flexibility is to expand the ranks of your “contingent workers” – temporary, subcontracted, part-time, and leased employees – that you now employ or contract for up to a ratio of 50% of your full time staff.  Thus, your full-time employees will be designated “core employees”

Core employees are, by definition, employees that are required to be full-time for the success of your organization due either to the unique nature of their position (e.g. Director of Nursing or Controller), or their positions are critical to the success of your organization (e.g. Chief Engineer or Nurse Manager).  All other employees will then be in the category of “contingent workers”.

This staffing model will give you unlimited flexibility for those peaks and valleys that are coming your way (if you aren’t there already).  Staffing densely with contingent workers, rather than with full-time or even part-time workers will give your healthcare organization the ability to respond to market conditions quickly and proactively. It’s be predicted that nearly half of the work force in this century will be classified as contingent, so don’t think this is a fad, craze, or passing trend.  It is the staffing and scheduling strategy of the future that is our obligation as progressive and responsible resource managers to employ today to ensure the success of our healthcare organizations in these unpredictable times.

 Copyright © 2002 The HCP Group, Ltd.

Robert T. Yokl, President, The HCP Group, Ltd., has over 35 years of experience as a consultant and manager in the field of Supply/Value Chain Management and is one of the country's leading healthcare experts in value analysis, value engineering and materials management. He is the developer and program leader of the award winning Certified Value Analysis Practitioner Training Program™. Mr. Yokl is also the developer of the healthcare industry's leading ValueNetCentral™ Value Analysis Software. Over the past two decades he has trained thousands of healthcare managers in his patented Strategic Value Analysis™ and Team-Based Project Management™ processes and has assisted scores of organizations in developing their own value management programs. He has published six books, videos and audios on supply/value chain management. His latest book being, “ Strategic Value Analysis™: The #1 Smart Strategy for Taking Cost Out of a Healthcare Organizations’ Supply/Value Chain”.