Industry: Healthcare
Locations: Galway
Employees: 887+
Introduction:
The Brothers of Charity Services in Ireland provide a variety of services and supports to approximately 6,500 people with an intellectual disability or autism, and their families, throughout Counties Clare, Cork, Galway, Kerry, Limerick, Roscommon, Tipperary and Waterford.
Flex brought instant visibility without the need to ask anyone. Everything is up dated on real-time, optimizing our time following work requests and dealing with sub-contractors along with providing a central hub of all our information to people who require it.
Improvement 1: Work Orders
Brothers of Charity used to document everything paper-based assigning tasks per departments. It was particularly challenging to oversee the activity per location and categorized them as they were mixed between each other and each individual had a piece of information.
Co-Workers: Supervisor didn’t get notified when a task was executed. After a few years, the paperwork was replaced with a few systems.
Supervisors: Required the team to feed relevant information for action. They needed to do a brief investigation interviewing a few employees to confirm the tasks were executed.
Management: None visibility across locations, what is happening one can department or who were the people responsible for those tasks.
Solution:
Work orders procedures became one of the pillars for Brothers and Charity operation. They have more than 700 locations, those dealing with different sets of volunteers. It was tough to keep track of everyone in real-time. Flex Manager solution allows them to the assigned task to their volunteers, employees and subcontractors, classifying them per department and category. Each supervisor can double-check the operation of their team or department smoothly.
Improvement 2: Subcontractors Management
Subcontractors were organised differently depending on the location. Most of the cases subcontractors have direct contact with one member of the department, but considering all the locations and different department simultaneously; Brother of Charity didn’t count with their information centralised.
Co-Workers and Volunteers: Handle conversations with the team to evaluate subcontractors performance.
Supervisors: None real-time oversight of pending subcontractors’ activities.
Management: No way to confirm the identity of subcontractors workers.
Solution:
Flex has given Brother of Charity the power to manage effectively their subcontractors. They send orientations and online inductions via email with Flex so once they are on-site there is no time to lose. Safety details and mandatory documentation are recorded on the system, as each subcontractor has its profile with access to their commitments and instructions of the job. Overtime Brother of Charity team evaluates their subcontractors periodically, guaranteeing the high quality of their services.
Improvement 3: Policies and Procedures
Policies and procedures normally are communicated via email, but the downside of this process is that companies can’t proof their staff acknowledge that information. If is the case of a sign off document can’t be archived over time.
Co-Workers: Some of them received the notifications via email, but they couldn’t get easy access to the documentation again.
Supervisors: Didn’t have a way to send reminders to their employees.
Management: No oversight who acknowledge the documents and couldn’t prove to the shareholders that the employees’ were informed.
Solution:
Flex Manager has a special module for policies and procedures. All the manuals can be shared through this tool, for example: employees’ handbook, specific procedures for the role, safety statements, etc. Also can be used for seasonal communications. Digital sign can be required to acknowledge the statement and the supervisor gets records and notifications. The supervisor can also send gentle reminders. Policies and procedures have been keeping Brother of Charity on track with policies and information that needs to be shared across the organization.
Improvement 4: Employee Profile
For Brothers of Charity was vital to keep a clear record of the people the are working with. They used to have all their records in spreadsheets and paper-based. But transferring their employees from one facility to another it could take days to compiled all the information relevant to that profile as they needed to be evaluated first for their supervisor.
Employees’ records: Upload manual documents to folders to ensure all relevant documentation i.e. insurance, contracts, training records. Most of the time this documentation was not updated.
Supervisors: They used to compile all their employee’s relevant information, time consuming task.
Managers: None performance indicators per department or oversight of their execution.
Solution:
Flex Manager brings transparency across locations and departments, one of the tools that impressed Brother of Charity is that all our modules are interlinked. From the employee’s profile, any supervisor can check their documentation, historical information, the assets that have been assigned to that person, all the work orders that they are responsible for and all the work orders they have executed. Simultaneously, they can check if they have been involved in any incident, time-off requested or even if they had any behavioural observation in the past. Full transparency for all their team.
Improvement 5: Training Manager
Brother of Charity used to have a few presentations, they used to do it presidential at their locations. The implications were time, preparation from the speaker and in some cases the cost increase.
Co-Workers: Responsible to receive the training for different departments of the company.
Supervisors: Ensure the team is trained and updated with all certifications required.
Management: They didn’t count with stats, how many training they carry out in the last six months, which are the upcoming certifications that need to be renew, etc.
Solution:
Flex Manager has allowed the team to receive their training simplifying the process. Brothers of Charity have its contractors’ induction, First Aids and their safety training in one single place. They can alternate their material using videos, presentations and classifying the content per sections, giving them full control of how they want to promote the message. They get reports every month with all the training they had and the most popular ones. Additional to this they receive notifications of the upcoming training that is about to expire, so Brother of Charity can play well in advance.
Improvement 6: Incident Reporting
Incident Reports have been very delicate for all the industries in the last few years. Brothers of Charity used to manage all their incidents as paper-based records but few bits were missed. Keep records over the years in case of future claims, support documentation like videos or photos, easy access for all the management team.
Employees’ records: Update manually all documents to ensure consistency, but even with that measure in place some details were excluded.
Supervisors: No way to have exact facts about the incident.
Managers: No records to deal with claims.
Solution:
Flex Manager comes with different templates for incident reports. Those have been built with all the specification required. Super Users can choose which sections are mandatory in order to get the right amount of information and details. Incident reports can be very complicated or very simple, Flex allows Brothers of Charity to customise their process by selecting how many stages of reviewers they want to have. Notifications can be send out to a special group of people when the incident change status, bringing full traceability.
Improvement 8: Emergency Evacuation
Brothers of Charity didn’t count with a system in place for this procedure. Right now the law expects every company to determinate a clear process to guaranty the safety of its workers.
Brother’s of Charity team: No system in place to verify who is out of the location and who remains in emergency cases.
Solution:
Flex Manager is a versatile solution that it is integrated with android and iOS. Emergency evacuation module can be opened from the app and all the employees log out once they leave the building in case of emergency. This module helps to verify instantaneously who is missing, in case the patrolman needs to come back.
Improvement 9: Asset Register
Using excel, paper-based or QR/Bar code systems were administration heavy, led to potential error. All the equipment in each location needed a tool to be inspected in an easier way and less time-consuming activity. Additional to this, if a piece of equipment was assigned to someone, the rest of the team didn’t have visibility of who has it and when this will be returned.
Co-Workers: Responsible to keep all inspections and maintenance updated.
Supervisors: Ensure the inspections are carried out on time and assigned tasks to resolve issues.
Management: Manage resources and equipment assignment, they needed visibility.
Solution:
Flex Manager use NFC Technology to track their equipment, as they can log all updates just by scanning the tag, at the same time if someone needs the information they just scan the tag and their team will have visibility of the history of that asset, upcoming inspections and maintenance and the person responsible. Everything is interlinked and managers can receive scheduled reports on a weekly basis with the breakdown of the information is relevant for them. Each supervisor can customise their own report, at the same time they can select the frequency of their preference.
Improvement 10: Scheduled Reporting
Reports are relevant in order to improve performance. Brothers of Charity knew this was one of the areas they needed to prioritized, reducing their timing and helping them to identify gaps.
Employees: Manually consolidation of the information from different departments.
Supervisors: Time consuming activity as the information was not centralised.
Managers: No visibility of execution, no opportunity of real-time insides or gaps.
Solution:
Flex Manager is a single centralised point to gather information. Brothers of Charity had set up reports for each department with key features that help them to evaluate their job. They mitigate misunderstandings and bring data transparency to all their operation. They received now reports of all the upcoming due dates, the plan for the next few weeks and monthly reports to evaluate each area. The reports were set up once and the system gather all the data for them. Less time consuming, allows them to identify areas for improvement and they can track their own records effectively.
Improvement 11: Notifications and Alerts
The way Brother of Charity used to communicate if a job was finished or a new element was assigned to someone was verbal. In some occasions that lead to confusion as the deadline was not stipulated.
Co-Workers: Responsible to keep track of their responsibilities but some times they forgot or misunderstood the task assigned.
Supervisors: No notifications in real-time of what has been executed, which was the result or in case something is missing they couldn’t check that information quickly.
Management: Management needed to see that big picture and get notified immediately if there were any outstanding issues.
Solution:
Flex Manager has allowed the team to get notified at all stages of the process. Notifications can be set up according to the preferences of Brother of Charity, they decides who receive what. Emails are an immediate channel of communication, for example, if someone has been assigned to a work order, they will check their email and obtain the link that redirects them to the task with all the specifications. Supervisors on their side, get notifications when the team have finished with those tasks, so they can click and double-check. When a task is highly relevant people can be added as an interested party so they can also have the same visibility. Brother of Charity are leaders in their industry as they have digitalized all their operations making it more dynamic and efficient.