In every industry, planning ahead is key to minimising scheduling issues and pharmacy is no exception. Whilst running a pharmacy, you will undoubtedly have to create shift rotas and schedules for permanent staff and locums alike.
Some pharmacies may plan these schedules week to week or month to month. We at Locate a Locum give our platform users the ability to plan up to 6 months in advance, because we understand that forward planning has more advantages than mere preparedness.
In fact, it can positively affect your pharmacy profits.
Prevent staffing issues
When running a pharmacy, it is key to avoid gaps in the rota, and it is even more important to make sure that staff issues do not cause store closure, which result in financial penalties from regulators.
By completing a rota in advance, employers give their staff adequate time to rearrange certain obligations or appointments if they conflict with shift times, or simply not make conflicting plans in the first place. Locate a Locum, for example, has seen an average of 50% decrease in last-minute shift requests with rotas completed in advance, as well as an average saving of £300,000 on temporary staff per year.
Alternatively, if certain obligations are immovable, such as weddings or pre-planned holidays, staff have enough time to alert their shift manager and apply for leave. The extra time built in between shift planning and the shift itself means that unfortunate scheduling clashes can be solved long before the pharmacy is set to open its doors and thus increase pharmacy turnover as a result.
Hire the best for the job
When planning ahead, you can make sure to hire the most qualified person for a particular shift and thus keep the services your particular pharmacy provides fully functional.
With the Locate a Locum platform, employers have access to 12,000 locums across the UK and can see real-time availability so that there is no time-wasting with messaging back and forth asking those particular questions. Even when deciding which locum to choose, employers can review their qualifications, documents and experience with different types of pharmacies, be they hospital or community-based.
Employee satisfaction
Satisfied, secure employees make for engaged, effective staff, and are proven to positively affect revenue. It is a common complaint in many industries that rotas and schedules are not posted well enough in advance, leading workers to feel uncertain about their own personal schedules and doubt their desire to stay with particular brands and companies for a long period of time. This particularly affects hourly workers and has been shown to have negative effects on their mental wellbeing.
Fortunately, in the pharmacy industry, this doesn’t have to be the case. Planning in advance gives employees the freedom to plan around these well established schedules and in turn feel less stressed and more effective when in the workplace, positively affecting your revenue.
Therefore, between avoiding vacant shifts, hiring a high quality mix of accredited staff members, and generally helping both yourself and employees to be unstressed and more productive, planning in advance really does have its benefits for increasing profits in your pharmacy.
If you would be interested in learning more about Locate a Locum’s platform for shift management, please have a look at our brochure or contact us directly via our website.