When you work in the NDIS space, you know that the needs of participants vary greatly, depending on the nature of their disability and living situations. As an agency, coordinating care for participants can quickly become challenging without the right systems in place.
But coordinating care for your participants doesn’t have to be difficult.
Here are three reasons why you need to focus on digital scheduling so you can better care for your participants.
1.Get scheduling right
For NDIS participants, the main focus is to ensure anyone — whatever the disability — has quality care. As a manager, that’s your main focus too. So you can’t be wasting time messing around with paper timesheets and paper attendance.
While moving away from manual systems may seem daunting, just keep repeating this mantra: It’s all about the people.
Ready to help keep your support workers, participants, and carers on the same page? It starts with scheduling. And here’s why getting scheduling right is so important.
It makes scheduling easier. Writing schedules manually can all too easily lead to mistakes. Whether it’s a gap in coverage, too much overtime, or simply a clash in shifts, human error can mean the difference between providing quality care or not. With a digital scheduling solution, you can make sure all the right checks and balances are in place across your entire schedule.
Timesheets become a breeze. Being able to clock in and out for a shift remotely using an app means staff can spend more time with participants, and less time manually keeping track of their hours. That means more time helping your patient with a visual impairment and less time tracking worked hours.
Ensure your people are in the right place, at the right time. Assign staff and tasks straight from the scheduling app. Support workers won’t need to call the office to ask where they’re working that day. Thanks to the address-based capabilities of a smart digital scheduling app, they’ll instantly know which participant to visit on their shift.
2. Improve communication
You’re on your way to see your next family, but you can’t remember what happened last visit or what the new care routine is. You think someone messages you, but was it over text or email or just a sticky note?
Text messages and written schedules mean important information can get lost. There’s a better way to keep everyone on the same page using the technology your team already has.
A team collaboration and communication system allows for the sharing of messages across all departments in one convenient place.
Communicate easily with your team. Streamline all communications with your team by using the app to send new information instantly. You can update policies, share training videos, or share an update regarding a participant. Any message you need. For critical information, you can request confirmation from the team.
Communicate effectively with your participants and family. You can implement a similar system for NDIS participants and their loved ones for ease of communication. This way, support workers can keep in touch with families without giving away their personal contact information. Use the messages to send reminders and request confirmation with participants, and leave a line of communication open for any questions.
3. Increasing payroll accuracy
Rostering support workers was tricky even before the pandemic. Recent times add a new challenge. With many agencies now managing teams that are both on and off site, how can you verify where they are? Can you confirm that they’re safe to work?
Thankfully, yes.
Touchless timeclock systems allow support workers to clock in anywhere through their phones. And it’s accurate for any situation.
Clock in at one location. Facial recognition and GPS features verify time and location. Wellness checks before the start of shift verify your employees are symptom-free.
Calculate mileage for moving workers. Meeting with participants at their homes and schools means a lot of time on the road. Use the app to keep an exact record of kilometers traveled and time spent on the road, making invoicing a breeze.
Make compliance easier. Ensure your team is in compliance with their breaks and other relevant laws by keeping accurate records. Every minute spent on the job gets recorded.
It doesn’t have to be so hard
A digital scheduling system keeps your office running smoothly even when your staff is out of the office. It saves time that was otherwise spent on administrative tasks and tracking down your team.
You’ll be free to work on the tasks that mean more to you, such as providing the care that your NDIS participants need.
Onboarding is easy for staff and participants, and possible on any mobile device. Let Deputy help your agency adapt to the new ways of working. Download this ebook for more (easy) tips.
