Top Workforce Management Challenges in the Irish Healthcare System and How Workforce Management Software Can Help
Healthcare providers in Ireland face many challenges when it comes to managing their workforce. This blog explores these challenges, their impact, and how the features available in workforce management software can help address them allowing for a more efficient working environment while increasing employee satisfaction and ensuring quality patient care.
What is Workforce Management in Healthcare?
Workforce Management in healthcare forms part of the broader suite of HR management activities and includes processes such as daily scheduling and attendance management to support the safe and effective delivery of patient care and protect employees against burnout or unsafe working practices.
Top Workforce Management Challenges in the Irish Healthcare System
1. Sláintecare Implementation
The vision of the Sláintecare1 reform programme being delivered by the Department of Health and the HSE is to provide a single universal health service for all, providing the right care, in the right place, at the right time. At its core, Sláintecare aims to tackle the main problems faced by healthcare in Ireland: patient care, waiting lists, high costs, overreliance on hospitals, and lack of adequate community care. It also seeks to improve access to healthcare and to improve electronic health in Ireland.
The Department of Health and HSE are working together to provide new models of care including the development of primary and community health services to allow people to stay healthy in their homes and communities for as long as possible. The changes required for the implementation of Sláintecare will have far-reaching impacts on the recruitment, scheduling and management of available healthcare employees. Workforce redistribution will be a key component. Sláintecare seeks to enhance community-based care and reduce reliance on hospital settings. As a result, more healthcare professionals, including doctors, nurses, and allied health staff, will be needed in primary and community care roles.
Sláintecare envisions reducing waiting lists and enhancing access to care, which will require a larger and more flexible workforce. Hospitals will need to hire additional staff and improve workforce planning to handle increased patient volumes, particularly as efforts are made to ensure more timely and equitable care.
Hospitals may experience a shift in the type of care they provide, focusing more on acute and specialised services, which could result in the reallocation of staff or changes to the skill mix required in hospital settings.
Training and development will need to be enhanced. Hospitals will need to invest in continuous professional development to upskill staff for new models of care, such as digital health technologies, integrated care pathways, and multidisciplinary team-based approaches.
Finally, workforce retention will be crucial. Sláintecare aims to improve working conditions by promoting work-life balance, enhancing professional opportunities, and improving workplace environments. Hospitals will need to adopt strategies to retain talent, especially in light of the competition for healthcare professionals both domestically and internationally.
2. Staff Shortages
Ireland’s healthcare system currently faces significant staff shortages, which have become a pressing issue affecting patient care and service delivery. Services are struggling to maintain adequate staffing levels, particularly in nursing and medical roles, due to a combination of factors such as the emigration of healthcare professionals, insufficient recruitment, burnout, and the after effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. This shortage is exacerbating waiting times, reducing the capacity for non-urgent procedures, and putting immense pressure on existing staff, leading to higher rates of burnout and turnover. Staffing shortages also hinder healthcare provider efforts to improve patient satisfaction, regulatory compliance, and patient and employee safety.
3. Ageing Population
According to the 2024 Revision of the World Population Prospects2, the population above the age of 65 is growing more rapidly than the population below that age. This means that the percentage of the global population aged 65 and above is expected to rise from 10% in 2022 to 16% in 2050. This change in population structure is leading to a higher demand for geriatric care, chronic disease management, and long-term care services all of which will require specialised training and expertise.
Ireland’s healthcare workforce is also experiencing the challenges of an ageing demographic, meaning that healthcare professionals are more likely to face health issues themselves, impacting their ability to work long hours or in high-pressure environments. As these older staff members retire, their departure takes with it valuable expertise and experience, creating gaps in knowledge and leadership that will need to be filled.
4. Technology implementation
The digital transformation of healthcare, such as the implementation of electronic health records and the use of telemedicine, can improve the quality of care delivered to patients and allow for a better, more streamlined working environment for healthcare employees. Adopting these new systems does however need to be carefully managed. Changes to work practices can be daunting for some employees and training on new systems and procedures will need to be delivered while ensuring adequate staff coverage for the provision of regular healthcare services, a tricky balancing act for workforce planners.
5. Employee Expectations
The expectations and preferences of healthcare professionals are changing and need to be considered in workforce planning.
Healthcare professionals are increasingly seeking roles that offer better work-life balance and flexible hours. Employers need to offer flexible work arrangements to attract and retain talent in a competitive job market. The need for flexible staffing practices, especially with fluctuating demand (e.g., during pandemics or seasonal illnesses also poses a challenge for effective workforce planning.
What is Workforce Management Software and how can it help?
Workforce management software is designed to help plan, manage, and optimise labour resources in a way that delivers benefits for both employees and the employer. Workforce Management Software offers solutions to help address key workforce management challenges in the healthcare sector through:
1. Automated scheduling
Effective employee scheduling is the building block for providing excellent patient care and plays a key role in employee satisfaction levels. In an environment where attracting and retaining suitably qualified employees is so difficult, it makes sense to ensure employees’ experience of this key feature of their working life is as positive as possible.
Many healthcare organisations use spreadsheets to manage staff schedules—a time-consuming manual process. Workforce Management Software automates employee scheduling saving time and improving the employee experience. Schedules are based on accurate to-the-minute employee time, attendance, absence and skills information allowing healthcare providers to automate the creation of optimised schedules that fully match expected demand levels.
Schedules can be created weeks and months in advance giving employees more visibility over their working schedules, allowing them a better work-life balance. Once finalised, schedules can be published through the Employee App so that staff are always aware of their expected working pattern. In addition, features such as “shift swap” can allow employees to request shift swaps, further enhancing their control over their working lives.
Automated scheduling also allows workforce managers to easily and quickly reallocate staff members within their divisions as needed, reducing the need for mandatory overtime, a frequent source of employee dissatisfaction. Optimising the schedule with employed staff also helps reduce the need to supplement rosters with agency workers which can be a costly solution allowing better control of labour costs.
These improvements to the employee scheduling process support the delivery of the best patient care while simultaneously giving employees more control over their working lives, creating a culture of motivated and empowered employees – vital in helping to retain and attract employees.
2. Safe staffing
Medical wards and emergency departments with low levels of nursing staff result in higher rates of patient mortality and adverse events, higher staff turnover and burnout, and increased costs to the health service. While there is evidence that higher staffing levels are related to better patient and staff outcomes, calculating safe nurse staffing levels and the right skill mix is complex and needs to account for the high level of variation in patients’ needs.3
The acuity-based scheduling features in workforce management software consider the intensity of care needed by the patient, assigning resources based on patients’ needs rather than the total number of patients. Under this model, a patient in a high-dependency unit would be assigned more care resources than a patient about to be discharged. Because acuity-based scheduling matches the work required to the skills, experience, capacity, and availability of the caregiver, they aren’t overloaded or overstretched. This results in reduced stress levels and more satisfied employees who can apply their skills correctly instead of operating in permanent “fire-fighting” mode which can lead to burnout and high dissatisfaction levels.
3. Skills and learning tracking
Monitoring the skills and qualifications of healthcare workers can be a complex and time-consuming task but it is vital to ensure compliance with regulatory standards. It also enables better workforce planning, ensuring the right skills are available for specific treatments and procedures. Skills tracking not only promotes patient safety but also enhances overall operational efficiency by ensuring that staff are both qualified and properly allocated to meet the demands of the healthcare environment. The additional challenges delivered by the delivery of Sláintecare combined with the impact of staffing shortages and the implementation of new technology mean that organisations will need to invest more than ever in ensuring employees have the correct skills. Workforce Management Software can easily record and track employee skills and completed learning courses. Extensive reporting facilities on skills, qualifications and competency levels are available. Reports can be generated at an employee, department, function, team or corporate level. Alerts can be sent when skills are due to expire ensuring compliance and patient safety. Utilising the learning and skills-tracking features of a workforce management system is a key aid in maintaining regulatory compliance, ensuring patient safety, and optimising workforce management in today’s dynamic healthcare environment.
4. Employee self-service
Each employee is unique when it comes to the preferred working pattern that best fits their work-life commitments. Allowing employees to input into their work schedules reduces the stress of juggling commitments outside of work, lessens burnout and improves retention rates.
Workforce Management Software with Employee Self-Service features can be made available to employees via smartphone, desktop or laptop. Through the Self-Service App, employees can be allowed to input their preferences, such as their availability to work overtime or specific shifts that they would prefer to have so that this can be considered when schedules are being created.
Schedules can be communicated to all staff through the App allowing employees to easily view information such as schedules, annual leave balances and personal information and giving them more control over their working lives which contributes significantly towards improving employee satisfaction and retention.
Employees who find they are unable to work a shift assigned to them can communicate a shift swap request through the App allowing interested team members to pick up the shift. To ensure quality of care, only those employees with the correct certifications required for the shift can apply for the shift and all shift swaps are approved by the relevant manager. On the other hand, employees who wish to pick up extra shifts can also express that preference through the App. Only shifts for which they have the necessary credentials will be shown as available to them and again once they apply to work this shift their application is reviewed by a manager before the shift is approved.
Employees can also update their personal details through the app to reflect changes such as bank details or addresses straight away – no emails and no waiting for HR to confirm receipt. Requesting or cancelling leave and viewing leave balances through the App is also simple to do. Once leave is approved, the employee receives an automated email alert and their leave balance is automatically updated. The employee is marked as “unavailable” for that day so they can’t be scheduled to work on a day when they are on leave – a source of annoyance for nurses.
With 24/7 visibility and great control of their information, it becomes easier for employees to juggle their work and personal lives leading to an enhanced employee experience, less absenteeism and more engaged employees.
Conclusion
In conclusion, workforce managers in Ireland’s healthcare sector face numerous challenges that, if not addressed, could impact the quality of patient care, employee well-being, and the efficiency of the healthcare system. However, with the implementation of Workforce Management Software, healthcare providers can streamline key processes such as scheduling, skills tracking, and employee self-service. This technology not only optimises the allocation of resources but also enhances staff satisfaction by providing greater control over their work-life balance. As the healthcare system navigates reforms like Sláintecare and responds to evolving workforce demands, adopting such innovative solutions will be critical in ensuring a sustainable, efficient, and patient-centred future.
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