New SMART partnership aims to help reduce NHS absenteeism :: PublicTechnology.net :: e-Government & public sector IT news + job vacancies:

Business software provider, COA Solutions has announced a partnership with workforce management specialist, SMART, enabling COA Solutions to provide its National Health Service (NHS) customers with SMART’s workforce management systems.

SMART’s solutions, which comprise staff bank management, electronic rostering and time and attendance software, link to the NHS-wide human resource (HR) and payroll system, ESR, helping acute trusts, primary care trusts and mental health trusts to maximise the potential and efficiency of their staff. SMART’s solutions release highly skilled nurses from administration duties back to patient care whilst reducing absenteeism, improving staff retention and cutting labour costs by up to five per cent.

With figures from Think-tank Reform highlighting that NHS staff take 50 per cent more time off sick than workers in the private sector, NHS organisations are being urged to find ways to reduce high absence levels. SMART’s workforce planning systems are key to reducing absenteeism as they promote a more flexible, fairer and healthier way of working, cutting staff absence in relation to disengagement, inflexible working patterns and illness.

Using SMART’s staff bank management system, NHS organisations can better manage how and when they use their staff, especially expensive temporary staff thereby reducing costs. With the electronic rostering and time and attendance solutions, staff can look at their own working hours, request shifts and arrange a shift swap via the Internet. With staff having direct access to view all pay related information prior to the payroll run, this ensures that pay queries are reduced. The electronic rostering provides a fairer system for staff whilst ensuring that the staff who are rostered to work have the appropriate skill set to meet patient care demands.

By feeding data from SMART’s time and attendance solution and the ESR system into COA Solutions’ HR business intelligence solution, People Analytics, NHS organisations are provided with a complementary, powerful analytics tool so that they can further understand the root causes of absenteeism and implement measures to best tackle this issue. People Analytics combined with SMART also provides NHS organisations with the insight to more effectively tackle high staff turnover, cut recruitment costs and optimise training costs.

Peter Leigh, Health Sector Manager from COA Solutions said, “This partnership with SMART provides our NHS customers with a comprehensive suite of workforce management solutions tailored to meet their challenging HR needs. As well as helping to reduce absenteeism which is costing the NHS £3 billion every year, SMART’s solutions have a range of other important cost, efficiency and regulatory benefits, helping NHS organisations to meet tough Government targets.”