This week, the General Medical Council announced that the government’s long-term strategy for the NHS may have come too late, with burnout leading many doctors to leave the profession.
WorkForce Software is used by employers of frontline workers, in healthcare as well as retail, manufacturing and other deskless industries, to better support and manage dispersed workforces – and Leslie Tarnacki, Chief HR Officer at WorkForce Software, believes that there are many contributors to burnout.
Leslie said simple scheduling issues can be a major contributor to burnout – and technology could help monitor and resolve many of the issues:
“Pay has been the headline demand of this year’s ongoing healthcare strikes. However, there are many other, deeper-rooted, factors that have also contributed to the sector’s staffing crisis – burnout being a central one.
“Delivering improved employee experiences for a dispersed workforce, especially in a publicly funded body like the NHS, can be challenging to say the least. This is where intelligent and modern workforce management technologies really offer peak value. For example, modern fatigue management systems can monitor hours worked, tasks performed, breaks taken, and time off scheduled to flag employees that may be at risk of burnout. Then, it will automatically send real-time notifications to HR teams, to help them stay informed about potential employee wellness issues in a more efficient way. This is especially valuable for NHS staff where overtime is extremely common, and where most staff already feel stretched, even before adding monitoring for burnout onto their list.
“Flexibility and improved work-life balance are at the core of solving this issue. Greater flexibility for frontline workers is easily enabled with smart scheduling technology – which can consider requested start/end times to match personal schedules, and give staff foresight of their schedule, so they can plan for their free time. This may seem basic, but it’s a challenge that many frontline workers still face – 55% of employees globally get their schedule at most 1 week in advance and still, 39% of them are not allowed to swap shifts.”