Business Making and Breaking it on Scheduling

Did you the notice the world is evolving around scheduling?  “Time is money” has taken on a whole new meaning.  This is across the board in all businesses from Hospital Scheduling centers to your car mechanic.  Is this good or bad?  Is it financially smart?

Individuals that administered your medical test also scheduled your appointment in the old days.  Car mechanics scheduled their own oil change appointments.  Not anymore. The master scheduler plans skilled service person for the day.  One of the main reasons is that the expert is not interrupted by the phone and they can focus on their skills and service the client or patient.  What has this done to the skilled operator?  They don’t get that 5-minute break to do a different task.  The article below on job rotation talks about the, “Job rotation benefits employees who participate by reducing job burnout, apathy and fatigue while ultimately increasing the level of employee satisfaction and motivation.” http://ivythesis.typepad.com/term_paper_topics/2011/05/the-impact-of-job-rotation-on-employee-performance-in-the-civil-service-a-research-proposal.html

Some schedulers have forgotten to give the skilled workers lunch breaks.

I have taken to commenting that schedulers have taken over the world.  It started out in manufacturing where scheduling production was crucial to making a profit.  It concerns me in the patient care world.  Care givers are working 10 – 12 hour days when it is proven that after 8 hours individuals get exhausted and fatigued.  I don’t want to be the patient being taken care of on the 12th hour.  Check your medications yourself.

What is the answer?  If we would pay the proper price for services without insurance and corporate greed skimming the profits we wouldn’t have to worry about every penny and we would have a buffer in there to allow more time for quality.  My mantra is “Let’s bring quality back.”  Even though the average time for a service is X, sometimes it takes longer, older individuals, younger individuals, etc.  Scheduling is taking the personal element out of the service.  “They” want us to believe that you can get both quality and a quick fix. In order to have happy clients, customers and employees, we may have to pay more for the product or service or your CEO may have to make less. Let’s go for the CEO making less.

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