Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust claims to have saved £0.5m in a year by introducing software to record employees’ working hours, administer their shifts and manage their expenses claims.
Managers at the Essex-based Trust, which employs 1,800 clinical staff – 1,500 of whom are nurses – are now using e-rostering, time and attendance and e-expenses software from supplier Smart. Nurses clock into work using biometric hand readers that feed their attendance times via the new system into a central payroll system.
As a result of the move, the organisation has cut the number of rosters it runs down from 300 to about 80 in the year since it switched to an electronic system. Accurate recording of time and attendance also ensures that nurses work the hours they are legally obliged to as set out by European Working Time legislation.
Managers and staff can likewise record their own annual leave, a move that is considered important in an organisation that constantly changes and where shift patterns are often complicated.
In its first year, the Trust said that it has saved £100,000 in payroll administration time; £23,000 because personnel are now working the correct hours; £18,000 by paying them the correct rates and £150,000 by reducing bank and agency staff expenditure.
Ian Child, the organisation’s financial controller, said: "So successful has the initial roll-out of Smart been that we plan to extend the system to the rest of the organisation – everyone from administrators, directors, caterers and porters by July 2012.”
