Harrogate improves workforce management

Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust has selected SMARTs e-Rostering solution to manage rotas for more than 1,600 staff. The system has been deployed on all medical and surgical wards as well as in maternity, outpatients, theatres, A and E and the administration, domestics and catering departments. Simon Round, the trust's workforce systems manager, said: "This gives us easy visibility to the rostering information and one place for all our data. We have rolled it out across the trust so that managers are now able to make sure we always have the right skill mixes working on shifts at the right times." He added that the solution had significantly reduced the time spent by managers to prepare shift patterns, particularly departments with complex roster patterns. The trust has linked the system to employee staff records, providing details of shifts worked, leave taken and sickness and reducing payroll processing. The web-based reporting tool also allows the workforce team to drill down into the data for analysis of skill mixes, rosters and annual leave. Tristan Spencer, health market director at SMART, said; "The potential savings are significant, with the NHS quoting figures of an average saving of £3.4m per NHS provider.