With 34,000 employees in the UK across 1,850 locations, the Sodexo team provides services – such as portering, security and cleaning – across the five hospitals that make up Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust.
Challenges
Sodexo needed an improved time and attendance and labour scheduling solution that would better schedule and record the placement of the right people, to the right areas, at the right cost - to meet tough NHS standards.
Sodexo needed a solution that could:
- Improve labour scheduling efficiencies to meet NHS rostering targets and thereby avoid fines
- Improve scheduling accuracy
- Reduce the time spent by managers on manual scheduling
- Accurately record worked hours to improve the payroll process
- Reduce labour costs
- Properly manage sickness and absence with a view to reducing unplanned absence
Solutions
Sodexo worked in partnership with UKG to introduce a time and attendance solution throughout the Central Manchester Hospitals with InTouch biometric terminals to clock in and out. Then, labour scheduling was deployed to ensure the right people were in the right place, at the right time, that enables supervisors to manage-in-the-moment from a single place, with a single view.
Time and attendance
- All employees use biometric terminals to clock in/out, removing the needto spend time looking for a manager to sign-off a timesheet
- Absence data is highlighted, enabling managers to intervene as early as possible
- Lateness can be managed effectively
- Accurate recording of worked hours has reduced the volume of invoice processing and payroll administration
- Employee scheduling
- Enables labour schedules to be created quickly and efficiently
- Ensures the right employees are assigned to the right job at the right time
- Improves scheduling accuracy
- Enables managers to consider cheaper ways to meet service levels, e.g.avoiding unnecessary overtime
- Provides advanced warnings of skills gaps enabling managers to proactively find replacements
- Enables employees’ rotas to be more predictable and known six weeks in advance
- Highlights employees that want to work additional hours
“When our employees feel their work is more organised and efficient, they feel much better about their jobs – it’s a very simple but important correlation.”
Sue Prince
Business Process Director
Results
Sodexo’s workforce management solution has generated significant benefits. Through better scheduling, premium rate overtime has reduced by more than £44,000 per year – a reduction of 14%. In retail alone, a 6% saving of £60,000 has been achieved through better scheduling. Shift accuracy has improved with exceptions falling from 25-30% to just 2-4%, smashing the 7% target. Supervisors are saving more than three hours per week through not having to manually allocate tasks, the equivalent of two full time employees. Supervisors are also able to meet service levels more cost-effectively.
