Amica Senior Lifestyles Increases Internal Staff Usage by 25%
Amica Senior Lifestyles uses Flex scheduling software to increase internal staff usage by 25%.
About Amica
For nearly 25 years, Amica Senior Living has enriched the lives of Canadian seniors and loved ones with its customized approach to care. Canadian-owned and operated, Amica residences can be found in neighborhoods throughout British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario.
The Challenge
Like many in the long-term care sector, Amica struggled with filling shifts and recruiting new staff, as the widespread labor shortage continues to worsen. Ensuring critical skill coverage and care hours for their residents was a top priority, and while they re-calibrated their focus to recruiting and retaining more staff to fill available shifts, their team was still facing several challenges.
Open Shift Coverage
Despite having dedicated coordinators spending anywhere from 2-3 hours a day scheduling and filling vacant shifts, open-shift coverage was in the 40-50% range, leaving a significant number of shifts unfulfilled.
Surging Labor Costs
Unable to pair vacant shifts with available and qualified staff, Amica paid a premium to either outsource to a third-party agency or pay staff overtime.
Workforce Turnover
Part-time and casual workforce, which made up 60% of their workforce experienced staff turnover upwards of 100% annually, placing extreme pressure on recruitment and training costs.
Quality of Care
Agency staff provided an inconsistent and inferior quality of care compared to internal staff.
“Before Flex, I was living on my phone. I would spend 2 to 3 hours a day to find staff, now I spend 5-10 minutes. Since our team members are the ones accepting the shifts (versus agencies), the residents are more happy and quality of care is excellent.”
— Megha K., Assistant Living Coordinator
Solution and Results
Amica partnered with Flex to better utilize their internal staff across 31 of their facilities. Flex helped connect their available staff to open shifts by automating callouts and empowering staff with a self-service app to accept and monitor new shift assignments.
By automating the callout process, incorporating seniority tiering, and intuitive, simple user interfaces, Flex dramatically changed the overall engagement with their existing team members and empowered them to take on additional shifts, depending on their availability.
Within 30 days of full deployment of Flex at Amica, they saw results that significantly impacted their utilization of their workforce and delivered a long-term solution to solving the labor shortage.
Shift Fulfillment: Fulfillment rates increased from 40-50% to 90%+ by utilizing internal staff.
Staff Usage: By offering staff the transparency and flexibility to pick up new shifts, they saw their average hours worked by staff increase by 25%.
Turnover: By offering a greater opportunity for shifts and the flexibility to control their own schedule, turnover amongst the part-time and casual workforce significantly decreased.
Labor Costs: Amica reduced agency usage by 20% as well as overtime, saving $1+ Million a year.
Administrative Time: Administrative time was reduced from hours to minutes for each open-shift request.
Care Continuity: By focusing on deploying their internal staff, resident enjoyed the benefit of receiving consistent care from trusted Amica employees.
Testimonials
“Before Flex, there were several pain points that we faced that was solved. First, our managers were spending hours in a week to do manual call outs that took them away from residents and the team that they served. Second, many of our casuals and part-timers were simply not aware that hours were actually available for them to pick up. The third thing that was solved with Flex, is that with its built-in callout audit trail, we can confidently say that we are offering all shifts by proper seniority protocol.”
— Katrina Mulholland, Director of People Development
“A key driver of success on this project was to increase the average hours worked by team members. We were able to increase this by 25% which was a huge increase. This is so much better for our residents. Another key driver was to reduce agency use by 20% overall overtime. I really enjoy working with Flex. Our priorities become their priorities. They are true partners that became an extension of our company.”
— Valerie Owen, Chief People Officer
“Using Flex is as easy as 1-2-3. It is quick and convenient and it takes no time at all. It has improved my life by allowing me to pick up shifts outside of work, my scheduled work-time. It has allowed me to have peace of mind and not worry too much about work if there is work available when I need it or not.”
— Jessica B, Personal Support Worker
“A key driver of success on this project was to increase the average hours worked by team members. We were able to increase this by 25% which was a huge increase. This is so much better for our residents. Another key driver was to reduce agency use by 20% overall overtime.”