Local administration Mortsel

Local administration of Mortsel confidently chose a new, modern workforce scheduling software. This led to more efficient scheduling, less hassle and even more engagement among coaches and caregivers.

Personal touch is key

At the lokal administration of Mortsel, home care services are strongly organized locally, at the district level. In total, there are five multidisciplinary district teams in which family care and cleaning services take care of each district together. Each district team is managed by a coach and a planner. They are responsible for drawing up and managing the team roster. Social workers provide support with advice on clients and the organization of help at home.

The main goal of good staff planning is that all clients can benefit from family care or cleaning assistance when they need it. In addition, Mortsel strives to ensure that those in need of care can always count on familiar faces. Personal contact and involvement are central to the local government’s services.

Paulien Gysels, coordinator of community care at local government Mortsel, emphasizes the benefits of good planning and working with the same staff with the same clients: “Both for our clients and for the caregivers, this has many advantages. A lasting relationship can be built between caregivers and clients, and our staff feel more involved. We strive to arrange replacements within the same district, but if there is no other way, we also work across district or team boundaries.”

The challenge: farewell Excel and paper

Previously, the hourly schedules for family care and cleaning help were prepared manually and maintained in an Excel sheet, which was centrally located on a server that not everyone had access to. Any changes to the schedule, such as absences, sick days, substitutions or leave, had to be made manually. Sick and leave requests were sent separately by e-mail, which regularly led to errors and duplicate registrations.

Moreover, the rosters were not readily accessible to everyone, so it was not always clear when adjustments had been made. Keeping client addresses on paper was also not convenient in the context of GDPR and because of address changes.

“Then if someone fell ill, it was very difficult to take over the planning. Which to continuity is not ideal. A schedule in Excel is now simply difficult to transfer. A lot of information about clients and employees was also in the heads of the social workers and planners,” Paulien explains.

Chadani Van Put, social worker at local government Mortsel: “And with every change in the planning, the planner or the social worker had to start calling around to make sure that both our people and clients were aware of the new planning. A time-consuming process.”

To address these challenges, Local Government Mortsel opted for innovation. They found a solution in Planpoint, a modern WFM software for staff scheduling, tailored to home care services. The result? Better planning, working more efficiently and fostering collaboration.

Efficient scheduling and collaboration with Planpoint

With Planpoint, the planning of the district teams is now in one modern and clear planning system. The system is accessible in the cloud, allowing anyone to access work schedules anytime, anywhere. The schedules in Planpoint are always up-to-date and employees are immediately notified of changes. Thanks to the improved overview, schedules can also be optimized in the long term.

“The planning used to be forwarded on a weekly basis, but every time something changed, it had to be passed on every time. There was a lot of communication back and forth. We were constantly getting phone calls asking about addresses or clients. Now we can simply say that the latest schedule and client information is always in Planpoint. It’s that simple.” said Chadani.

Colleagues who are not involved in scheduling on a daily basis, such as administrative staff, also sometimes get a question about staff scheduling. They too can simply access work schedules or client files in Planpoint without having to contact a scheduler or coach first.

“Planpoint is really a big win for the planners as well as for our employees. All the information is up-to-date and in one central location . Now everything is available digitally. The cleaning teams and caretakers can see immediately via the app who they are working with, and on which day they are scheduled with which client. But also at what time of day or location. That’s really great. A huge step forward.” adds Paulien.

Once employees have arrived at a client’s location, they can even use Planpoint to submit comments for the planner, register expenses or enter mileage. In the future, employees will also have the option to have the client sign off on a task or assignment.

Regarding her favorite functionality, Chadani explains how handy she finds the schedule overview: “In the planning board, you can immediately see whether a caregiver or cleaning assistant is scheduled for all clients. The overview or hatch at the bottom of the schedule is really handy. Through colors you can immediately see if there are any gaps, if all employees are effectively scheduled. You can also customize the view of the planning board as you like. I can check at a glance who is working today or tomorrow, and which employees have space for another client.”

Implementation and change

Mastering new planning software obviously requires some flexibility from employees. That is why local administration Mortsel could count on the personal guidance of the Déhora consultants. Both during implementation and after going live.

“The transition went super well. Most of the district teams immediately loved Planpoint, it sorted itself out,” says Paulien, “Because we have a slightly different way of working than most home care organizations, I can imagine we have quite a few speciallekes. But we always get heard and the people at Déhora are very accessible. Every question or request for adjustment is taken seriously.”

To ensure a good start-up, training sessions for planners and coaches were organized. Step by step, they learned to make optimal use of Planpoint’s capabilities. Subsequently, caregivers were also involved in the change process. This is how we got everyone on board.

Next steps

An additional reason why Mortsel chose Planpoint is its long-term scalability and flexibility. Indeed, in the next phase, Mortsel local government will take advantage of the option to automate performance processing as well.

“Soon, we will also handle home care billing and time reporting through Planpoint. Performance forms from employees are currently submitted on paper. We have to check, add up and enter all those forms,” said Chadani, “In Planpoint, that can just be done digitally, performance is immediately forwarded for billing. Then those papers are no longer needed. Really everyone looks forward to that,” Chadani laughs.