You wake up on your day off and you get a phone call. Someone can’t cover their shift and your manager needs someone to come in. It’s a phone call the managers hate to make, and one employees usually aren’t happy to receive. It is, however, a standard part of any company’s operating procedures. So how can the process be made less frustrating for everyone involved?
SimplyCast would like to introduce the Staff Recall for Open Shifts use case. This is a single-tool automated use case that can handle the messaging of staff, the sending of follow-up requests, and providing custom responses while also limiting the number of staff that can claim a given shift. This helps to address understaffed shifts while also avoiding potential overstaffing.
From the employee’s perspective, an automated solution makes it easier to do things like check against travel times or reschedule prior commitments if necessary before responding to the staff recall, and it also allows them to keep those commitments if need be. A pre-generated message and response system means that messages can exclude those with strict availability limitations, and the use of responder types in the recall ensure that employees only get notifications for shifts that they are trained on, cutting down on erroneous messages.
The solution makes use of a powerful recall tool to send messages, receive responses, and limit confirmations to the number of shifts available. It can even set different amounts of shifts for different roles based on employee information in the central database.
Ways to Improve the Shift Recall Process
SimplyCast anticipated the need for a staff recall solution that would help management save time and improve employee experiences. When it comes to the ways recalls can be improved, we identified three areas in which the process can be tweaked to make it better for everyone:
Managers – Message Personalization
Set up pre-generated responses for confirmations or refusals. This provides a bit of distance between management and employees which, in this case, is a good thing.
While management may need the shift covered, many employees have prior commitments on their days off that can’t be moved for a variety of reasons. Refusal after refusal can be frustrating, so not having to respond to each one individually will help the manager stay grounded in the needs of the organization at that moment, and help employees feel safe in refusing extra shifts if they can’t take them.
Managers – Follow-up Messages
Not every employee will see the recall message right away. You can set up follow-up messages to send to ensure that a response is given. Follow-ups will not be delivered to employees who have already responded, so you can maximize responses.
Staff – Feedback
The most important thing staff can provide is engagement, obviously, but above that, feedback. If something about the recall solution doesn’t work as efficiently as it could, we need to know! The solution is highly customizable to each organization’s needs, so let management know so we can work to make the staff recall solution better.
Why SimplyCast?
These are the core opportunities we identified where a digital solution can improve the staff recall process, and where we can help.
The SimplyCast platform is a no-code platform that is fully customizable and can be tweaked or altered to meet the exact needs of every institution.
SimplyCast is an ISO 27001:2013-certified company with data centers in the USA and Canada. This means we can assure you that your confidential data is safe on our secure server and the messages you transmit are completely encrypted. Our platform has the capacity to send more than 100,000 messages every hour and allows for more than 10,000 concurrent sessions. We can also acquire additional gateways and servers if you need them.
Most importantly, we have a 99.5 percent minimum uptime. With our solution, you can have peace of mind. 
Interested in Improving Your Staff Recall Process?
Don’t wait! Our experts are ready to give you a one-on-one demo to explain how this solution works.
Simply request a demo by clicking the button below and let us show you how our solution can help you manage staff recall more efficiently and fill open shifts in a way that everyone can appreciate.
