Springfield- Greene County 911, Missouri
Using Station Block Demand to Improve Scheduling Efficiency
A Personal Challenge- Customer Driven Design
Springfield 911 is a testament to InTime’s commitment to using customer feedback to drive the development of the product. In 2015, Springfield was looking for scheduling software that could handle their unique scheduling requirements. Springfield has dispatchers and call-takers that rotate through different desks every few hours during their shift to prevent burnout and promote cross-training. After much evaluation, Springfield chose InTime because of the auto fill feature where employees would be automatically loaded into the system- which no other competitor offered. InTime and Springfield were committed to making this work but after testing and implementation, Springfield found it wasn’t quite accomplishing what they needed with their schedule.
Springfield returned to their old excel and paper-based scheduling.
“I made the decision that if InTime couldn’t handle what we wanted then I wasn’t going to find anybody else and I wasn’t going to waste my time.”
Development of Station Block Demand
InTime took this as a personal challenge. Over the next year, InTime developed Station Block Demand. This function allowed schedulers to lay out all of the stations that needed filling and the training requirements for each station. InTime would then automatically fill in employees to each station ensuring everyone had an even distribution throughout their shifts at different stations.
The Return to InTime
With Station Block Demand ready to go, InTime reached out to Springfield again. After a quick trial run, Springfield signed back on and continues to use InTime.
“Once I found out what you guys did, once we cancelled the contract the first time I thought we were done. To find out that your boss took that as a challenge made me feel pretty good, made me feel like we picked the right company. He took us leaving personally and he wanted to prove that InTime could do what we wanted to get us back.”
Springfield reduced their time building out the schedule by 76%!
SPRINGFIELD-GREENE 911’S CHALLENGES
PAPER SYSTEM
It took the Springfield supervisors hours to create the schedule for a single day using Excel and too many hands in the pot led to multiple errors.
HUMAN ERROR
With the paper system, employees would be double booked or completely left off the schedule. By the time it was noticed, it would be too late, and Springfield would have to run short or force overtime on employees.
INEQUITABLE ALLOCATION
Rotation through the different stations was done manually and there were allegations of sitting too many hours on one phone or channel.
LACK OF ACCESSIBILITY
Employees couldn’t access their schedules outside the office and were not able to see available overtime positions unless they were in the office.
SHORT TERM REQUESTS
Short term requests had to be submitted by email to supervisors and recorded in a separate Excel sheet. Requests would get lost or misplaced.
INABILITY TO PULL REPORTS
Looking up a single employee in the Excel schedule would take hours and reports would have to be created manually.
WHAT CHANGED AT SPRINGFIELD-GREENE 911?
We spoke with Rick Crismas, Operations Manager, and Jennifer Meloy, Supervisor, at Springfield-Greene 911 to see how they were able to use InTime to reduce time scheduling, improve communication, and eliminate errors.
LESS TIME SCHEDULING
A significant reduction from 32 hours building out one month’s schedule to only 7.75 hours. With station block demand, supervisors didn’t have to manually enter each position and double-check to ensure equal distribution or training- the system handled this for them.
“I like how using InTime has streamlined the process for scheduling, so that my scheduling supervisor can devote the majority of their time to supervising the Operations floor, and not have their attention diverted by having to constantly be working on the schedule.”
“It felt like errors happened all the time, at least once a week- it’s just human error. Now, I don’t ever see the errors, I love that it catches if there is less than 8 hours between schedules or double bookings.”
NO STAFFING ERRORS
On a weekly basis there would be at least one double booking, or one employee left off the schedule. With InTime, these errors have been eliminated as the system will not double book employees and will alert the supervisor to shortages in the staffing well in advance.
NO STAFFING ERRORS
On a weekly basis there would be at least one double booking, or one employee left off the schedule. With InTime, these errors have been eliminated as the system will not double book employees and will alert the supervisor to shortages in the staffing well in advance.
“It felt like errors happened all the time, at least once a week- it’s just human error. Now, I don’t ever see the errors, I love that it catches if there is less than 8 hours between schedules or double bookings.”
IMPROVED VACATION REQUESTS
Before InTime, the supervisor would send out an email alerting employee that short-term vacation requests were being accepted. This would lead to an influx of emails and requests that would have to be manually input. Now, with InTime, employees can easily submit their leave requests through InTime and the supervisor just has to accept or reject it.
“Keeping track of emails with vacation requests in the Excel spreadsheet took a long time and making sure nobody got missed. I love the fact that using InTime that’s all done for me.”
“It’s definitely more accessible. Anybody can look at the schedule anytime because they have access to it through their InTime portal where they can also go to sign up for overtime or put in short term requests. With the ones that have the Android app, they’re able to access that anywhere, even if they’re at home. The accessibility with this program is a huge bonus.”
MORE ACCESSIBILITY
Employees can access their schedules from home or their mobile devices. They are able to see their chances of having vacation requests approved. Additionally, if changes were made to an employee’s schedule, they were only alerted when they were in the office via a message on the CAD system. Now, their schedule is updated immediately online, and they’re notified of any changes.
MORE ACCESSIBILITY
Employees can access their schedules from home or their mobile devices. They are able to see their chances of having vacation requests approved. Additionally, if changes were made to an employee’s schedule, they were only alerted when they were in the office via a message on the CAD system. Now, their schedule is updated immediately online, and they’re notified of any changes.
“It’s definitely more accessible. Anybody can look at the schedule anytime because they have access to it through their MyTime portal where they can also go to sign up for overtime or put in short term requests. With the ones that have the Android app, they’re able to access that anywhere, even if they’re at home. The accessibility with this program is a huge bonus.”
BETTER REPORTING
With an Excel spreadsheet it was not possible to generate reports based on different employees, dates, and more. Using InTime, supervisors can generate reports in seconds to track employees and leaves.
“If I wanted to backtrack on what somebody was doing, I would have to go back and look at the resource plan. I’d lose several hours a day looking for one person. Now it takes me 15 seconds with InTime’s reports.”