Healthcare doesn’t keep office hours – Bavarian Red Cross Blood Donation Service

Joining forces against indifference. This is the mission statement of the Bavarian Red Cross Blood Donation Service as it works day in, day out for the benefit of people’s health. The organization serves as a major medical laboratory, a reliable logistics provider and an innovative research center – not to mention organizing thousands of donor sessions. Backed by some 680 members of staff, it provides 75 percent of all the vital blood collections needed in Bavaria, 365 days a year. The organization has relied on ATOSS for its time and attendance management for a long time now. The working time models including time premiums, company agreements, on-call standbys and service data, as well as premiums for filling in for colleagues were all incorporated swiftly into the system. The positive effects of digital workforce management were also plain to see in no time at all: less admin, leaner processes, nuanced, multifaceted evaluation options and maximum working time transparency.

Another, more sizable challenge was to implement workforce scheduling for the 240 employees in the mobile donation service aboard “BluMo”, as staff have affectionately nicknamed their blood donation van. The project was certainly a complex one – 4,400 mobile and 1,100 on-site sessions a year, 20 flexible teams made up of company staff and volunteer physicians, different locations every day, fluctuating donor turnout and the need to integrate various third-party systems. Dispatchers have to plan each deployment individually, factoring in issues such as working times, workplaces, staff residential locations, qualifications, setup time, potential overnight stays, expected donor numbers and doctor availability. The Edgeblood system feeds in data for team planning and calculating staffing levels, while geconomy delivers information – accurate right down to the nearest kilometer – about how far employees have to travel to get to each donation venue. Approximate scheduling data for the volunteer physicians is also imported into the ATOSS solution. Planning staff can access all this information from one central cockpit, allowing them to schedule the mobile team to best meet demand at optimum cost – with maximum transparency and flexibility ensured at all times. In this way, running in the background, workforce management helps support the Blood Donation Service in its invaluable mission.

Source: ATOSS CUSTOMER BAVARIAN RED CROSS BLOOD DONATION SERVICE / ATOSS Annual Report 2019