Case study: Aged care
Future-proofing rostering systems and processes
Rohling has partnered with Carrington Care on transformation projects that have ranged from strategic planning, data centre updates, enterprise resource planning, finance systems replacements, clinical systems upgrades and mobility solutions, to financial consulting and home care systems deployment. Now, the residential care rostering systems upgrade was our challenge.
About Carrington Care
Carrington Care is a Sydney-based aged care service provider that offers services across community care, retirement living, assisted living and residential aged care services to customers in the Macarthur region and South Western Sydney.
With an over 130-year history, Carrington’s vision is “one of aspiration, to maintain our best in class offering”.
“Carrington is committed to providing a holistic person-centred model of care. Built on our CARE values and a long-standing tradition of service, we deliver the quality care and service excellence that our consumers expect and deserve.
“We treat every consumer with dignity, respect, and kindness, and deliver care and services with compassion, integrity, and sensitivity.”
With an eye to the future, Carrington is constantly improving its facilities and services in line with its strategic plan.
The challenge
The scope of Carrington Care’s customer needs and employee responsibilities required a shift from manual and spreadsheet-based processes that were time-consuming, costly and error-prone.
Within Carrington Care’s old residential care staff management processes, rostering was managed decentrally in silos by administration assistants within each facility. As such, rostering staff across multiple sites were unable to adequately align workers with customer requirements.
Knowledge or information was not easily shared between facilities, leading to rostering vacancies or double-ups, and subsequently affected the alignment between wage cost and wage budgeting. For example, administration assistants did not have access to individual leave records, which meant staff were rostered on at conflicting times and facilities therefore over-relied on agency staff or last-minute overtime.
Planning for longer absences, such as maternity leave, was conducted ad hoc, which left facilities, teams and budgets unprepared to fill long-term vacancies.
The finance team also did not have adequate visibility over individual staff and facility wage costs in order to inform their budget, planning and forecasting processes accurately or quickly, which during times of crisis such as COVID-19 was vital.
Similarly, due to its manual nature, the existing rostering process comprised a significant portion of the administration assistants’ roles at each facility, compounded by the fact that the complexity of tasks associated with workforce management, rostering, leave management and scheduling made it difficult for administration assistants to undertake in conjunction with their other responsibilities.
The Rohling solution
Rohling’s aged care experts are familiar with Carrington Care’s organisational structure, processes, culture, and business goals, as well as the wider aged care sector and best practices for residential aged care rostering processes.
Successfully delivering a residential aged care rostering solution to an organisation of Carrington Care’s scope requires tailoring approaches to suit its people, processes and systems, and aligning those with the organisation’s strategy.
“Carrington Care has a strong history of putting the care needs of ageing Australians first, and it’s this ethos that we want to carry into the future. We chose Rohling international to help future-proof our aged care systems and processes, in order for our staff to spend less time on admin, and more time focusing on care,” Carrington Care Chief Executive Raad Richards said.
Rohling’s team of aged care experts were brought in to conduct a discovery and implement a cohesive strategy that allowed for responsive and integrated systems and infrastructure to more effectively manage Carrington Care’s largest expense: labour.
Centralised, automated and efficient technology-based business and finance operations were introduced to enable the organisation to maintain exceptional care quality standards and commercially viability.
The new systems allow for greater workforce and financial visibility across service areas, a necessity for managing the impact of regulatory changes in a constrained labour market.
After careful consideration, RITEQ, a Scheduling/Rostering, Time & Attendance and Award Interpretation software system, was chosen to work in conjunction with PayGlobal, the existing employee self-service payroll and leave management system.
Rohling’s team worked directly with Carrington Care’s Executive Manager People & Culture from discovery and strategy through to implementation.
Following discovery, the Rohling team worked with Carrington Care and RITEQ on business process validation, a high-level solution and integration design, and reconciled it all with a robust change management plan.
Rohling’s specialists then acted as the systems integrator and managed Carrington Care’s engagement with RITEQ, which included developing and following a deployment strategy, ensuring deliverables were met by their deadlines, working with the Carrington Care team on testing, learning and development resources and workshops for core staff, and ensuring a sustainable systems integration with more efficient and effective processes.
The Outcome
Carrington Care has now transitioned the residential aged care rostering to a centralised system managed by a centralised rostering team, rather than administration assistants within each of Carrington Care’s facilities.
Removing the manual nature from the process leads to fewer data integrity issues and miscommunication across facilities, and allows administrative staff to focus on integral tasks rather than undertaking ad hoc and time-consuming rostering jobs.
Rostering is now significantly more efficient and effective across the residential care stream, with staffing availability and staffing gaps quickly identified and reconciled
As a result, facilities have a lower demand for last-minute agency staff or overtime.
As well as this, long-term staff absences and changes are visible across facilities, allowing for planning further in advance.
A centralised system also enables more effective contract and workforce compliance, as rostering teams are aware of contract hours to be honoured, as well as the different skills and roles of staff across each facility.
When there is regulatory change, Carrington Care has the tools and processes in place to reconfigure operations more easily.
This visibility across facilities also allows for a broader workforce planning strategy, economies of scale, and shared learnings and rostering decisions for the benefit of the organisation as a whole, not just each facility.
“In 2016, Carrington Care embarked on a three-year strategy covering both business and digital transformation, where Rohling International led the digital transformation program, integrating it very closely to our business change initiatives,” Carrington Care Chief Executive Raad Richards said.
“Rohling International’s skills and expertise in managing complex change has resulted in a successful program covering business process planning and definition, infrastructure refresh and upgrade, in-home care solutions – including mobility, an upgraded residential care system, mobility solution and clinical process deployment, upgraded payroll and HR systems, Epicor CRM, SLS and financial deployments, and planning for additional business intelligence, marketing and resourcing solutions.
“Our work together with Darren Gossling and his team has continued, and this program has provided us with a significantly strengthened platform for business growth, efficiencies and delivery of our key mission to be a great Aged Care provider. Carrington Care will continue to work with Rohling International in the near future to exploit new technology and business solution options. I recommend Rohling International as partners in driving a complex digital transformation in line with wider business strategy.”
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