Well-documented pressure on staffing following the COVID-19 pandemic and the cost-of-living crises alongside rising waiting lists, rota gaps and changes in complexity of care have made the rostering process more challenging than ever before.
Traditional NHS rostering uses a labour-intensive manual process. It requires monitoring of necessary service requirements, regulations and compliance, whilst incorporating staff requests regarding leave and shift patterns. On busy rotas, service provision will be necessarily prioritised over staff wellbeing. This means there is a potential risk of unfair distribution of overtime, lack of flexibility and reduced training opportunities, which in turn can cause low morale, overburdened staff and decreased retention.
The British Medical Association (BMA) considers self-rostering aspirational best practice improving flexibility, staff autonomy, while managing health and safety obligations and staffing/skill-mix requirements.
In our case study presentation, which you can download below, we describe the ways in which e-rostering can provide a solution to improve the rostering process. We describe past and current trials across the UK and provide exemplars of both manual-automated hybrid and a purely algorithmic approaches.