Staff Shift Scheduling Made Easy

SHIFT SCHEDULING

MADE EASY Software that automates corrections workforce scheduling and payroll operations.

SCHEDULING a corrections workforce can be a challenging and time-consuming task. Overtime, staff vacancies and labor laws are part of the myriad considerations schedulers, administrators and staff must reconcile when scheduling shifts for all employees.

Because of these complexities, employing a manual scheduling system can be detrimental to both employees and employers. Staffing vacant positions daily with well people and who have seniority—especially as a pan

demic is occurring—can be daunting to supervisors. Taking leave time while using a manual system could often leave employees in the dark regarding how much time that had left or if they had no time available, and causing instances of docked pay.

In contrast, automated scheduling software can reduce these inconsistencies, cut back on heavy manual administrative tasks and fill open positions with senior people while reducing overtime.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, for example, in the past had been using standalone legacy and manual systems to staff 2,000 vacant custody and nursing positions daily as a result of sick calls, vacations, etc. Ensuring that overtime was allotted fairly and applied consistently based on seniority and the organization’s four collective bargaining agreements was challenging. With 34 adult institutions and two juvenile centers, each with a medical unit spread around the state, and 56,000 employees from correctional officers to medical staff, it was time consuming to get an

ScheduleAnywhere, online scheduling software, is designed for public safety departments that schedule for around the clock shifts or create schedules for multiple departments, locations or divisions.

enterprisewide view of the workforce.

After selecting and implementing Kronos TeleStaff to automate employee scheduling and connecting it to CDCR’s primary SAP time management solution, a new enterprise time and shift solution was deployed. Through this integration, more than 700 CDCR and CCHCS scheduling staff now use Kronos TeleStaff to pass assignment schedules and payroll data to SAP, which accurately captures scheduling data, processes time, and calculates overtime, notes Kronos.

Automating employee scheduling has created scheduling uniformity and reduced grievances, with all department and union policies built into the solution.

“Standardization helps ensure that everybody is treated the same,” says Paul Smith, program director, Business Information Systems. “Now there’s one set of seniority rules, so shifts and overtime are awarded consistently.” When legislation required reducing the inmate parole population and led to layoffs, standardized seniority guided a fair reduction in the workforce.

Integration across scheduling, time management, and payroll ensures employees receive accurate regular, overtime, and premium pay. “Whether they are at their home institution or another, we can track their work and make sure they are paid correctly,” explains Ken Ritzman, user project manager.

Leave-time accountability has improved too. Before, employees who took leave could be unaware they had no time available and owed CDCR for this time. Now with real-time leave balances, if employees call in sick and have no leave time, they are made aware of this situation, reducing sick leave taken and instances of docked pay.

Calculating overtime once took up to five HR staff at each institution four or five days every month. Overtime is now calculated automatically, creating potential savings of $1.5 million annually, and these employees can focus on other job activities, the firm details.

The Kronos Workforce TeleStaff software deployed at CDCR is specifically designed for public safety. Corrections agencies use it to automate employee staffing and communications, control labor costs, and minimize compliance risk. When integrated with Kronos’s Workforce Dimensions, a cloud-native, mobile-first, artificial intelligence-powered workforce management suite, Workforce Telestaff will empower real-time, reliable staffing decisions based on a holistic view of workforce insights, accruals, overtime entitlements, union rules, labor laws, and employee skills, to improve the speed and accuracy of managing scheduling operations.

“Workforce Telestaff additionally expedites real-time scheduling and eliminates the need for manual phone calls to fill open shifts: It ensures the right employees are automatically contacted in the right order—a process that improves employee satisfaction, unburdens supervisors, and drives productivity,” according to Jennifer Dowd, senior manager, public sector practice group, Kronos Incorporated. Self-service features additionally enable users to swap a shift from their mobile phone, as needed.

“Most importantly,” says Dowd, “Kronos is working with

public safety and corrections organizations across the country to help them address employee fatigue. It’s a pressing challenge facing this industry and is directly associated with long shifts, overtime, and staff vacancies. Kronos technology provides realtime visibility into labor data, which empowers correctional agencies to assign open shifts most effectively, i.e. to the most qualified officer with the least amount of overtime or the lowest number of consecutive shifts.”

Cutting Payroll Processing & More

COSS by Visual Computer Solutions (VCS) is a scheduling and time & attendance solution that provides customized software specifically for corrections agencies and jails. Designed to meet the real-world challenges facing criminal justice facilities, COSS automates all scheduling functions from relief factor management, training schedules, overtime, payroll integration functionality, and more. Overall, COSS calculates pay rules, manages minimum staffing levels, and configures a rules-based scheduling process while ensuring compliance with all mandated business requirements.

The firm states that COSS can be utilized “to dramatically reduce the time it takes to efficiently create, access and manage error-free timecard and schedules, completely eliminate paper while cutting payroll processing time in half, and manage time to reduce overtime costs.” It notes that the size of its correctional agency customers can range in size from 50 employees to thousands.

The company outlines a few of its top features as follows. The VCS Compliance Manager helps agencies to remain complaint with all collective bargaining agreements, contracts, state and federal legislative rules, internal regulatory and HR policies with the automated rules-based sched

uling module. The system can be automated to grant or deny overtime based on specific requirements that you set.

“Managing a diverse workforce that can include rotating schedules, exempt and non-exempt employees as well as part-time and full-time workers is a challenge if done manually,” says Cathy Leone, director of Business Development, VCS. Staff Selector, or rules-based scheduling, provides the ability to strategically match employees by skillset or any defined ruleset unique to your organization for any critical area of need. “Always ensure that the right employee with the right skillset is always working at the right time. As a result, see a reduction in overtime costs and staff shortages with real-time scheduling analytics at your fingertips,” she details.

With COSS’s Timesheet Calculator, managers can “simplify payroll and take efficiency to the next level with the elimination of paper and the ability to easily generate electronic timesheets.”

Overall, Leone furthers, “our clients have seen significant benefits in time management, improvements in efficiency, elimination of errors often associated with a manual system and reduction in officer fatigue—a common and serious problem among correctional agents. Our system ensures that shifts are allocated properly according to rules determined by the agency with the ability to automate time clock management within the platform. In doing so, elimination of unnecessary overtime saves manpower costs and allows the agency to operate more efficiently.”

Online and Mobile App

ScheduleAnywhere, an online scheduling software developed by Atlas Business Solutions, Inc., manages employee scheduling and shift management, including time-off and schedule requests, proper shift coverage, skills and Automated scheduling software can reduce some of the inconsistencies related to manual scheduling and fill open positions with senior people while reducing overtime.

certification tracking, messaging and custom reporting. It is designed for public safety departments that schedule for around the clock shifts or create schedules for multiple departments, locations or divisions, and is customizable for enterprises of all sizes with one or multiple locations and departments and any number of employees.

Because ScheduleAnywhere is accessed online, the software allows correctional facilities to create and manage online schedules from any computer or mobile device with Internet access. Administrators, officers and staff can access work schedules remotely to effectively communicate and manage scheduling needs. Users can request and approve time off and review coverage and staffing needs anytime, from any location, details Jon Forknell, vice president and general manager of Atlas Business Solutions, Inc. “ScheduleAnywhere ensures proper shift coverage and fundamentally reduces scheduling errors and conflicts.”

Managers and staff have 24/7 access to the most current schedules via ScheduleAnywhere’s