Optimizing Healthcare Workforces: A Deep Dive into Infor WFM

By: RPI Tech Connect   July 16, 2024

In this episode of RPI Tech Connect, we’re discussing the challenges facing healthcare workforces today and how solutions like Infor Workforce Management (WFM) are helping to address them.

Join us for a discussion focused on exploring why issues of labor shortages and burnout are affecting healthcare. Plus, learn how tools like Infor Shift Bidding and Self-Scheduling can preserve and strengthen healthcare workforces. Joined by special guests Brianna Zink, Sr. Director of WFM Product Strategy at Infor, and Max Fisk, Principal WFM Consultant at RPI, tune in to find out strategies for optimizing healthcare workforces and enhancing staff satisfaction.

Meet Today’s Guest, Brianna Zink

Brianna Zink is a Senior Director of Global Strategy for WFM at Infor, based out of Charlotte, North Carolina. Her career began in healthcare where she worked in a variety of settings as a Registered Nurse including long term acute care, medical surgical, critical care, and emergency/trauma as well as some time as a Clinical Case Manager.

Brianna completed her master’s degree in nursing in 2018. For the past nine years, she has been focused on Workforce Management technology to support care efforts of organization with complex labor planning needs.

Meet Today’s Guest, Max Fisk

Max Fisk is an accomplished Principal Consultant with vast solution architecture and consulting expertise from time spent in leadership positions at Deloitte & Infor. He joined RPI in April 2023 and is already leading Bootcamp trainings. He is one of the foremost experts in Infor’s Workforce Management product suite and has successfully designed and delivered dozens of custom solutions to a multitude of appreciative clients, with a strong focus on the public sector and healthcare.

Max stays current with the latest industry trends and best practices, and he approaches each project with attention to detail and a goal of creating an ideal solution to fit the business needs while ensuring end users have the best experience possible. With a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Hofstra University, Max has a solid track record of delivering top-notch human centered UX experiences.

Max also has a strong background in project management and is adept at completing his projects on time and within budget.

Meet Your Host, Chris Arey

Chris Arey is an experienced B2B marketing professional with nearly a decade of working in content creation, copywriting, SEO, website architecture, corporate branding, and social media. Beginning his career as an analyst before making a lateral move into marketing, he combines analytical thinking with creative flair—two fundamental principles required in marketing.

With a Bachelor’s degree in English and certifications from the Digital Marketing Institute and HubSpot, Chris has spearheaded impactful content marketing initiatives, participated in corporate re-branding efforts, and collaborated with celebrity influencers. He has also worked with award-winning PR professionals to create unique, compelling campaigns that drove brand recognition and revenue growth for his previous employers.

Chris’ versatility is highlighted by his experience working across different industries, including HR, Tech, SaaS, and Consulting.

About RPI Tech Connect

RPI Tech Connect is the go-to podcast for catching up on the dynamic world of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). Join us as we discuss the future of ERPs, covering everything from best practices and organizational change to seamless cloud migration and optimizing applications. Plus, we’ll share predictions and insights of what to expect in the future world of ERPs.

RPI Tech Connect delivers relevant, valuable information in a digestible format. Through candid, genuine conversations and stories from the world of consulting, we aim to provide actionable steps to help you elevate your organization’s ERP. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or new to the ERP scene, our podcast ensures you’re well-equipped for success.

Tune in as we explore tips and tricks in the field of ERP consulting each week and subscribe to RPI Tech Connect below.

Show Notes

1. Servant Leadership and the Healthcare Staffing Shortage
2. Address the Healthcare Staffing Shortage: Definitive Healthcare Report

Transcript

Chris Arey (00:01)
Healthcare continues to experience labor shortages, but with the right tools, organizations can create work environments that their teams want to work in. Stick around as we explore techniques for optimizing healthcare workforces.

Chris Arey (00:08)
A recent report conducted by Definitive Healthcare finds that one in five healthcare workers has left the industry, and nearly 50 % plan to quit within the next two years. Those are some seriously striking statistics. So, how did we get here? And more importantly, how can healthcare organizations better serve their teams as labor shortages continue to take hold? A significant area to focus on,

is to create a work environment that health professionals want to work in. A great way to make that happen is to let them have a say in when they work and to create transparency around the entire process. Today on RPI Tech Connect, we’re exploring the healthcare labor shortages as well as how organizations can retain their teams and prevent burnout. To lead the discussion, we have Infor’s Senior Director of WFM Product Strategy,

and former nurse Brianna Zink and RPI’s principal WFM consultant and scheduling wizard Max Fisk. Brianna, welcome to the show. Max, welcome back.

Brianna Zink (01:19)
Thank you. Good night.

Max Fisk (01:19)
Thanks for having us.

Chris Arey (01:22)
Yeah, so thanks so much for joining me on today’s segment. As I mentioned earlier, the healthcare sector is facing a crisis with labor shortages. I’m sure this is no surprise to either of you. But, Brianna, as a former nurse, what do you believe are the reasons for this? How do we get here?

Brianna Zink (01:41)
Yeah, so a few things. First, I think that the, I mean, it’s pretty apparent the pandemic kind of escalated how important or how severe the shortages. If you kind of look back, I remember when I went into nursing school, hearing so much of, there was so much job security going into nursing because there was gonna be a nursing shortage, which was many years ago at this point. So it’s not like it’s something that just we woke up.

Three months ago and said, my goodness, we’re in this nursing shortage. It’s something that’s been, we’ve been trending towards for quite a while, but the pandemic kind of caused a lot of nurses to leave the workforce. One, women across the board in kind of the employment marketplace left the workplace because of the pandemic. And then fewer of them have come back. I think that’s also represented somewhat in nursing and nursing is still the majority of women.

So I think that’s kind of has something to do with it. And then the other is that nurses just across the board, it, it’s hard to feel appreciated and valued as a nurse. I know when I was working at the bedside, I had many times where I didn’t feel appreciated or valued in a lot of that. Not that it all boils down to workforce management and scheduling, but a lot of it does. there’s there, it’s such a draw to go into nursing and I think about working in a hospital and working three days a week, you know, you have four days off, this is going to be great. But then when you have no control over what those three days are.

Or you’re flipping from nights to days and back and forth and working the weekends and all the shifts you don’t want, those three days quickly kind of take over your life. So I think there’s kind of just a combination of, and then the aging population. So a lot of nurses are baby boomers that are getting ready to retire. We’re not replacing them as quickly. So I guess kind of the pandemic feeling underappreciated and then just the workforce demographics are all leading us towards a worsening nursing shortage.

Chris Arey (03:31)
Yeah, and these issues didn’t happen overnight. Like you said, a lot of this has been, the pandemic probably kind of sped things up, but this is a long time in the making, yeah?

Brianna Zink (03:44)
Yeah, definitely.

Chris Arey (03:46)
Okay, so, you know, I think I saw a statistic online that said that like a lot of nurses, like people who like receive their licenses and were practicing have decided to like put that on hold due to the working conditions. You know, you hear that and you’re like, wow, this must be a really not great work environment to be in if you, you know, made the decision to go into nursing. How many years of schooling is that?

Do you, could you, do you recall?

Brianna Zink (04:17)
Yeah, so most RNs have a four year, a bachelor’s degree to become an RN. So at least a four year degree, but some kind of do additional schooling before that and then additional certifications that you need depending on your unit or area.

Chris Arey (04:29)
So you figure you spent all that time, you know, focused on this is your career and you completed and you’re working and you’re like, you know what, this just isn’t for me anymore. You got to figure that speaks to the level of working conditions, right?

Brianna Zink (04:43)
Yeah, definitely. And I mean, part of it too is it’s a very emotional job. You’re interacting with patients or their family members on, especially in a hospital setting on what’s potentially one of the worst days of their lives. You know, it’s not like we all woke up this morning and intended to go to a hospital or wanted to go to the emergency department. It’s kind of one of those areas where a lot of people don’t want to be. And then it’s also very personal too.

Chris Arey (05:06)
It’s not a good time.

Brianna Zink (05:10)
Everyone kind of has their own healthcare journey, your own health is very personal to you. So just the nature of it can be very emotionally draining. And in a sense, you want those nurses that are there because it’s emotionally draining. You don’t want a nurse at your bedside that’s just completely cold and hardened to it. So it’s kind of this balance to strike where you want that emotional tide, because you want someone taking care of you or as a healthcare leader, you want someone taking care of your patients that cares.

Chris Arey (05:30)
Yeah.

Brianna Zink (05:40)
But you also need to be cognizant that that caring can kind of lead to burnout also.

Chris Arey (05:46)
Yeah, just to clarify real quick, you said like, you know, going into this, you know, the three day work week, four days off sounds good, you know, in like, as an idea, but when in practice, it can quickly overwhelm your life. How long are those shifts typically?

Brianna Zink (06:02)
Yeah, so typically it’s three 12 hour shifts is still kind of the standard, which I’m curious to see if healthcare is trending towards maybe being a little more flexible there. You know, when I was fresh out of school in my early twenties, that worked wonderfully. But thinking about different stages in your life where maybe you have young children at home or, you know, just other responsibilities, sometimes a 12 hour day that, you know, you got to commute there and back. There’s a lunch break in there. So really it’s at least a 12 and a half hour shift plus the commute.

Every waking moment on those three days that you’re working is kind of committed towards working. And then I know from my perspective, we had kind of what we called self scheduling, but I would select my shifts and then the schedule would be published and it looked nothing like the shifts I’d actually selected. So you’re gonna have to put your life on hold to wait until that schedule came out because you can’t plan something when you’re gonna be working every waking moment on that particular day. So that’s kind of what I meant about the three days aren’t always as great.

Chris Arey (06:58)
Yeah.

Brianna Zink (06:58)
Then with the staffing shortages, just about every nurse out there is picking up additional shifts. I know even, you know, 10 years ago I was working one, two, usually two at the most, but five 12 hour shifts in a week is, is a lot. That’s so, yeah.

Chris Arey (07:10)
That’s insane, yeah. It sounds exhausting. Go ahead, Max.

Max Fisk (07:13)
And if you’ve got things you have to do, like pick up, drop off, sports, anything like that in your personal life, a 12 hour shift pretty much takes care of that entire day. If you’re working an eight hour shift, you can at least take the drop -offs or maybe the pickups, but a 12 hour shift pretty much takes the whole thing. So it is huge that 12 hours of your life.

On that one particular day, you’re not really accomplishing much else but work. So picking those days and working, you know, right, yeah, and then you go to sleep and you wake up and turn around and do it all over again. And that’s if you’re, you know, on night shift to night shift or day shift to day shift. If you’re switching from one to the other, it’s gonna be pretty brutal.

Chris Arey (07:45)
Yeah.

Brianna Zink (07:45)
Yeah. Are we only gonna take a shower?

Mm -hmm.

Chris Arey (08:01)
So this is great because now I think we’ve made it crystal clear that there’s a problem here. And for today’s segment, I’d like to explore how organizations can better cater to their staffing needs. And Max, this question for you. As someone who started their career working at one of the most well -known hospital systems in the country, I’m curious to hear from your perspective, how can businesses create a more desirable work environment? What can they do?

Max Fisk (08:30)
Yeah, you know, and Brie, you can back me up on some of this, but you made a really good point on that self scheduling. You know, folks would self schedule and self scheduling has been happening long before WFIM applications have been doing it. You know, it’s been on green sheets or on the wall or on a whiteboard or wherever it is. You know, they’re doing it. But then once it comes out, once it’s published, it may not look anything like what you selected.

And that could be for multiple reasons. When we’re talking to schedulers and nurse managers and everybody when we’re doing discoveries and building out self scheduling applications for people, the reasons that people balance shifts out and move people around, some of them make sense, some of them can kind of often be unfair. You might get a couple of your shifts moved because somebody else didn’t pick up their minimums.

Or somebody might have tried to stack their schedule and put all their shifts in the first couple of weeks and then open up the last couple of weeks so that they can have a whole week off. And it sometimes can impact other people. And then the tools themselves can also impact that. And that when you’re kind of transitioning between what folks are signing up for and what you’re balancing, when the manager’s balancing things out and making sure that they’ve got the right headcount,

They might have to move people around quite a bit in order to get those numbers correct because they may not be communicating or they may not be able to enforce minimums and maximums. So if you have a system that makes sure that people aren’t picking up too many Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday shifts so that everybody can have a five -day weekend, then people will stack their schedule that way. People will do it. It happens. And that’s…

Chris Arey (10:17)
Haha.

Max Fisk (10:25)
Kind of comes back to shoot them and other people in the foot. It kind of impacts that. So any number of reasons that self -scheduling turns into something like preference scheduling, but a good workforce management application for self -scheduling particularly can really help with that because if you can, and in some institutions, I know at Hopkins sometimes there are six or eight months out, especially if it were a holiday calendar or a holiday period, people were scheduling.

Very far in advance, and you build plans around that. You attend weddings on those schedules. And there’s the concept of a roster day off, where within a six -week schedule period, you can select two days that you absolutely don’t want to be scheduled. But if your unit is staffed properly, if people are doing what they’re supposed to be doing, schedulers and managers have the resources and the tools that they need to balance out and maintain schedules.

Chris Arey (10:59)
Yeah.

Max Fisk (11:23)
people are less likely to call out for the shifts. People are less likely to have to get called in, you know, on call is less used, travel nurses are less used agencies. So there’s a lot less of that up and down, which causes people kind of mix that flip between self scheduling and preference scheduling, where you go from, you know, picking the schedule that you want and typically ending up with it with a good system to picking the schedule that you want. And then, like you said, looking at it at the end of the period and then it

Doesn’t represent anything of what you wanted. Because yeah, you balance your whole life around that and the time period between you selecting those shifts and you seeing actually what you ended up with can be a couple of weeks too. So you make plans around what you pick up and then you see what you actually ended up with and you got to redo all those plans. It’s tough. Yeah.

Chris Arey (12:12)
That sounds tough. Yeah. Self scheduling as a concept sounds like it’s something though that gives, you know, nurses and other like people working in healthcare, more control over their lives. And I can see how like that can create more autonomy, especially if there’s like transparency around it and like things are being adhered to. But Max, we touched on this briefly in our other discussion, like the power of self scheduling.

But it sounds like there’s some other maybe new tools on the horizon, like shift bidding and billboard manager. Like what, what is, first of all, what are those tools and you know, what, what can we expect them to, how can they help? Yeah. Help teams.

Max Fisk (12:56)
Yeah, so I can speak to what Infor has. And, you know, Brie, you can back me up on what’s on the horizon and what’s coming. But Infor currently has a billboard tool and a self scheduling tool. And the two are kind of designed to be used at different times. Self scheduling is designed a couple of months ahead. We’re creating schedules, we’re building minimums and maximums, and we’re trying to balance our schedule out, right? We’ve got daily quotas.

We’ve got the X number of people that we need here and there, and they need this skill and they need that skill. So you’re building out your unit quotas, essentially who you need. And then you’re building out employee quotas to make sure that each individual is selecting what they need to select within that six week period so that you can kind of have that balance. So those self scheduling tools, when built correctly and maintained, they can generate 80, 90 % of somebody’s schedule for them.

And then the balancing is where the billboard kind of comes in. So when you’re balancing your schedule and you’re looking for folks to pick up additional shifts, or if you’re more present and, you know, folks are calling out or they’re having last minute leave, thing like that, you’re using the billboard tool then to send those shifts out. The rules are maybe a little bit more relaxed. People can pick up additional shifts, maybe more than 36 hours per week.

So we don’t want people to schedule themselves into overtime when they’re building their schedule. However, when we have a shift that we need filled now, you know, I may or may not care if that puts you into 60 hours, you know, we kind of need it, need it filled at that time. So the billboard allows for kind of the more immediate response to those shifts.

The self scheduling tool has had a lot of good advancements from the end user perspective. So from the nurse’s perspective, how they’re interacting with that self scheduling tool has changed a lot in the last few releases. And I think has drastically improved that experience and made it much easier for folks to pick up what they want and more likely to end up with it when the schedule is published. And the billboard tool is getting a lot of advancements as well.

Something recently that just came out was the ability to bid on shifts within the billboard. So if a shift is posted out there, several people can go in and place a bid on it, depending on whether they belong to a particular group or whether their credentials meet what is required for that shift. And then managers or supervisors can go through the process of awarding that shift out to somebody depending on any different factor that they can come up with. So…

Chris Arey (15:19)
Mmm.

Max Fisk (15:42)
Those, I think those two tools really lend themselves to folks picking up, you know, they get to pick their schedules. They get to build out what they want, which in turn increases staff satisfaction and reduces call -outs. That’s something that they’ve observed over time in that, you know, if you, if you, if you get called in to work, what you’re hoping to work, you’re less likely to call out essentially.

Chris Arey (16:06)
That makes sense too. This idea of shift bidding, do you see that kind of activity happening around shifts that are maybe quote unquote more popular or more desirable to work? What kind of situation do you see that being most effectively used?

Max Fisk (16:27)
It comes in two parts. For an end user, for a nurse, you can kind of cast a wider net potentially. So you can bid on lots of shifts that you would like to work and you can bid on potential shifts that would throw you into overtime or would put you in a situation where you maybe wouldn’t be able to work that.

But it allows you to kind of place a bid on a lot of…variations of shifts. So you can request or you can place a bid on 12 different shifts and end up with three of them. So it allows the end user to kind of, the nurse to cast a wide net. It also benefits the manager and the scheduler quite a bit as well. And that they get to choose potentially who ends up with that shift.

So if it’s something that’s going to put someone into 60 hours that week, or if it is going to trigger a bunch of different differentials, or if it could potentially cost somebody more money or more importantly, put somebody into a situation where they might burn out for picking up too many shifts. They have the ability to award those shifts out to people depending on a lot of different things, their skills, their current schedules, agency status, lots of different things like that. So it tends to benefit both groups when used. So that is a big advancement on that end there.

Chris Arey (17:50)
Nice. And so it sounds like folks on Cloudsuite WFM have some really helpful functionality to look forward to. So I have to ask though, some of these things are newer than others and more is on the way, but how has Infor gone about introducing these features? Were they requested by clients, years in the making? What’s the story?

Max Fisk (17:59)
Yeah.

I have some personal references and stories about that for sure. But Bree, if you want to start on this one, I think you are probably more in touch.

Brianna Zink (18:23)
Yeah, so it’s kind of a combination of we definitely take into account that client feedback and kind of the there’s various ways customers can do that, whether it’s enhancement requests or we have different kind of user groups and ways that we interact with customers to also understand it may not be an enhancement request where that’s, you know, I wish this worked this way, but it may be, you know, like I have this idea that is just kind of a net new idea and would be really great.

So we take into account kind of those. That client feedback. We also do a lot part, a big part of my role is kind of understanding what’s going on in the marketplace and looking for trends that I’m seeing and kind of trying to think of, of ways that workforce management as a whole can kind of work towards that vision of really making scheduling and time tracking better for employees. With ultimately the end goal that it’s more and more hands off. So nurse managers aren’t spending as much time doing the things like Max said around the balancing.

So kind of a combination of what’s happening in the marketplace, what our ideas are, feedback from customers, ideas from customers. And then there’s also an element of kind of looking at what others are doing as well, because we also want to make sure that we’re staying competitive in the marketplace.

Chris Arey (19:33)
Hmm. Sure. You got to love that Infor has an ear to the industry too. It’s like, it sounds like they’re being more proactive and like giving customers what they want to better use these applications. And I feel like that’s been a theme that at least, you know, here at RPI we’ve kind of seen over the last year is that that’s been a priority. And I know that Infor Connect, that was one of the things they kind of, you know, spotlighted was soliciting and acting on customer partner feedback.

Does that sound right?

Brianna Zink (20:03)
Yeah. I was going to say, I’m glad you kind of circled back to that because I missed a huge one and that’s that partner feedback. So I know me personally, like Max is one of my go-tos. And as he was talking about a lot of those things, I was thinking, you know, he’s talking so great about what the solution can do.

And the solution does have a really robust breadth of functionality, but the solution that spans an enterprise like that is also only as good as it is configured. And I think Max and RPI as a whole does such a great job of kind of talking through like.

Chris Arey (20:27)
Hmm.

Brianna Zink (20:31)
How he was talking about balancing the schedules and kind of how you can restrict everyone from picking up Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. That’s really an art because if you restrict it so that not everyone can pick up Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, you also have to make sure that you’re not restricting it too far where people go in and there’s no shifts available.

So it’s really takes this kind of comprehensive understanding from in foreign what we’re offering and partners like RPI and having someone like Max at the table to understand kind of. How that process works downstream and then understanding the customer’s processes and kind of their culture as well. So yeah, but definitely partners and people like Max that are also getting that feedback from customers and really in the solution are a big driver of that as well.

Chris Arey (21:15)
Very cool. That’s good to hear. We like to hear that, Rihanna. Thank you. Worth that.

Max Fisk (21:15)
Thanks.

Yeah, and from my experience, one of the things that makes In4WFM so powerful is its flexibility. So, as an organization and me as a consultant, I can do quite a bit with the core configuration. We can build extensions off of the product if we need to, but the core configuration allows us to build out and…use many different tools in many different ways to accommodate for an entire institution. So every scheduling unit can do something different.

They can have their own set of rules, incentives, and, you know, Chris, like we were talking about last time, with, you know, the shortage as it is right now, every scheduler and manager has their own incentive program. They’ve got their own tips and tricks as to how they need to keep their people. They don’t want people to quit.

So they’re incentivizing people and the system can help with that. So we can go from unit to unit, department to department and build out, you know, really different tools that allow people to do those things.

And, you know, it’s my responsibility as a consultant representing, you know, in four that if I continue to build something that a lot of people are requesting, even if it’s something that, you know, requires a little bit of work, if it’s something that we can build into the core product.

That would make an implementation faster, that it might make the tool easier to use all around. If it’s me, you know, changing a couple screens to look differently or to, you know, maybe act a little bit differently, but the core functionality is still there, it’s my responsibility to go to Infor and talk to them and tell them what I’ve seen.

And then, you know, they can cooperate with other consultants and other folks in the industry and with Bri and everybody, and then make a decision as to whether that should be in the core products. And…

Honestly, more often than not, good ideas get filtered through multiple different customers. And then you kind of find out that the one or two people that you’re working with, the one or two organizations that you’re working with at the time are not the only people that want that. So it’s important for people to speak up and talk through that stuff. And it’s important for customers to tell us what they like and what they don’t like, because oftentimes they’re not alone.

And it gets built into the core product. And that’s what we’ve seen over the last few years within Fours, that they’ve really been listening and building a lot of that stuff in there, that it’s helped exponentially.

Chris Arey (23:57)
You want to go ahead? You got something?

Brianna Zink (23:59)
So I was just thinking, one of the things that we’ve really been at Infor kind of focusing and talking about is that the kind of traditional vendor idea has somewhat gone away because we are always continuing to build on these solutions and continuing to improve them. And with, you know, multi-tenancy cloud customers are always on that most recent release or, and, you know, trying to adopt these new features. So it is just this big ecosystem that lends to that overall.

Success of how that looks for each customer rather than just kind of installing some software and walking away. But I feel like Max really explained that with kind of how that process works.

Chris Arey (24:32)
Hello?

I love that you called it an art too, right? Like it’s not just installing the software and walking away. It’s understanding the culture of the company, understanding their needs and helping them get the most value out of it, right?

Brianna Zink (24:47)
Yeah, especially people think I’m crazy, but I truly believe that workforce management and the workforce management processes and practices, especially at a healthcare organization, are really tied to the culture of the organization. Like, do they do self scheduling or not? Do they allow nurses to swap shifts? Max was talking about the shift billboard from the manager posting them, but employees can also post to a shift billboard, which then kind of provides more cohesion across that workforce to be able to fill those shifts. So it’s really kind of

Max Fisk (25:14)
Right? So instead of people just not showing up, they can work with their coworkers to find coverage. If you can’t work today, maybe you can work tomorrow or the next day. So enabling them to be able to see their coworkers’ schedules and see what other folks are working so that they can make that decision. They’re not calling around, they’re not texting people, and they’re not just flat out calling out. You know, they’re working with each other because they want to support the people they work with. And they realize that if they call out…

Brianna Zink (25:17)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Max Fisk (25:44)
Then that’s gonna put other people in a bad situation. So yeah, it’s people helping each other out, but putting them in a situation where they can, you know, is important.

Brianna Zink (25:55)
Exactly. Health care is so tough because it’s so important that you’re staffing and scheduling around the clock. Patients don’t stop needing care because it’s 2 a on Christmas morning. I think that that collaboration that you were just referring to is key to getting those nurses and those frontline staff that flexibility and that control in a way. Because you’re right, you can’t just not show up for, I mean you can, but you shouldn’t just not show up for.

Max Fisk (26:05)
Great.

Right. It is a pretty uncool thing to do. Yeah. It’s not like your chair is just empty that day. Someone’s going to have to do your work and that’s going to make the job exponentially more stressful. That’s already stressful. It’s, you know, when you talk about doing a really, you know, hard job having your support system be the, you know, your coworkers, be your team, be the people that you work with every day.

Chris Arey (26:21)
You’re doing your team dirty when you don’t show up.

Brianna Zink (26:27)
Yeah.

Chris Arey (26:37)
Yeah.

Max Fisk (26:47)
And when people are kind of using cutthroat tactics for self scheduling to push other people out of shifts or when they’re potentially gaming the system or yeah, just one of the things that you said early on in the episode, Chris, was just transparency and giving people the opportunity to do the right thing. And that’s what I kind of repeat over and over and over again to customers, especially when they want to build.

Brianna Zink (27:06)
Mm.

Chris Arey (27:06)
Mm-hmm.

Max Fisk (27:16)
Huge rules, all these roadblocks and rules that prevent people from doing things because yes, it will stop people from doing what you don’t want them to do, but it might also hinder the process. The more roadblocks in place, the less complete of a schedule that you’re gonna end up with. So, I try to implore people that with this level of transparency, trust your people and they will more than likely do the right thing.

Chris Arey (27:38)
Yeah. So I have to say, we’ve been talking about how Infor’s been doing a great job of soliciting feedback from clients and partners and user groups. And this is something that’s been happening over time. But I think that the results of those efforts are beginning to bear fruit. For those of you listening in today, this will be in the show notes. But a Nucleus research report recently shows a WFM technology value matrix.

And it has in for WF and the greater usability and better functionality quadrant. That’s the top right one. It’s the best place to be. And it’s got it sitting right next to, you know, other dominant players in the space like UKG. And so I think this is a testament to the product and what it’s delivering. And, you know, it’s just awesome to see, like we’re talking about it here, but like other third parties are recognizing it too. And it’s becoming like a more dominant, you know…option for workforce management.

Brianna Zink (28:43)
Yeah. It’s exciting.

Max Fisk (28:44)
Yeah.

Chris Arey (28:45)
Haha.

Max Fisk (28:47)
Pretty wonderful when Infor hires folks like Bree with a nursing background to help drive the product. Who’d have thunk hiring a nurse to help build nurse scheduling? Yeah, right?

Chris Arey (28:52)
Yeah, that I was gonna say what a smart hire that was. How long have you been in for now?

Brianna Zink (28:59)
Thank you.

So total seven years, but I was hired by Infor nine years ago. I’m a boomerang. So I went to a competitor and came back because I missed Infor and I missed the people, I missed the solution. So.

Chris Arey (29:09)
Nice.

Max Fisk (29:16)
Hehehehe.

Chris Arey (29:17)
That’s great to hear. They have, there’s really good statistics out there about boomerang employees actually, like leaving and coming back. Like that second, like, you know, reentering into the, like the organization, like you’re more focused and more driven. Like, you know what you want. You made a decision to come.

Brianna Zink (29:33)
You can have it.

Max Fisk (29:33)
And you’ve seen what the other side looks like.

Chris Arey (29:37)
Well, that’s very true too. So we’ve been talking about, you know, what’s going on in healthcare and how WFM can help with, you know, solving some of these issues. But I have to ask, you know, WFM, it’s not a new product. Maybe the name is, did a rebrand or something, but like, what’s the history there? How did the product evolve into what it is today? And yeah, what can you share?

Brianna Zink (30:04)
Yeah. So, that’s a great question because workforce management, started out as Workbrain, which was a time in attendance, a really great time in attendance solution, headquartered in Toronto, Canada that was founded in 1999. So 25 years ago at this point. and then in for acquired Workbrain in 2007, really seeing kind of the value of extending that traditional ERP to include, you know, the workforce management and more of the people aspects of it.

And then in 2014, in my mind, this really signals kind of when Infor shifted and started putting a lot of focus on the healthcare functionality around workforce management. They acquired a company called Grasp, and Grasp is now the evidence -based methodology that powers a portion of our workforce management for healthcare solution, which is called clinical science. It leverages documentation happening in the electronic medical record or EMR.

And it essentially kind of measures how long it takes to care for each individual patient based on that unique patient’s documentation happening in the EMR. So from that, you’re able to staff across the different units based on those real-time patient needs. We’re able to help kind of automate that nurse patient assignment process to make sure it’s fair, safe, and equitable so that you don’t have one nurse with a really light workload and another one just kind of drowning in tasks.

So I’d say that is really kind of when a lot of that focus shifted to understanding what’s needed in healthcare and that healthcare specific functionality that’s now been built into workforce management. And then there’s a lot of things like a lot of the stuff Max was talking around with the shift billboard and the shift bidding. We see other industries leveraging them as well. So health care is a very complex industry as far as the nuances to scheduling, but then a lot of the other industries that we’re in benefit from those complexities as well.

Chris Arey (31:58)
I appreciate that background. I would not have guessed that it got its start back 25 years ago, 1999. That’s actually when RPI was founded, so it’s as old as us. I think so, yes. So hey, look, we’re getting close to time here. And before we wrap up, I’d like to ask my guests a very important question. Max knows this question. He knows it well.

Brianna Zink (32:09)
No?

Max Fisk (32:12)
Match made in heaven.

It’s destined to be.

Chris Arey (32:28)
But Brianna, this is your first time hearing it, but if you could offer today’s audience one actionable takeaway based on today’s conversation, what would you share?

Brianna Zink (32:40)
You know what, Max’s comments about how kind of the healthcare staff will do the right thing and will pick up the shifts and cover the shifts for each other, I think is, I’ve been hearing it in some other conversations I’ve had, and I guess I’d summarize it as assume good intent. I think as so many organizations are going through these big projects that impact the culture, I think it’s really important to under, especially in healthcare and nurses, as part of showing your appreciation to them.

Chris Arey (32:57)
Nice.

Brianna Zink (33:09)
To assume good intent. They’re there to care for patients and they’re there to make people’s lives better. So I think we need to come from a place where we’re assuming that they’re gonna work to get those shifts covered and they’re gonna work together to make sure that patient needs are taken care of. So I think assume good intent was what I would tag on for today.

Chris Arey (33:26)
I think that’s generally good advice period too. Like just having that outlook and assuming that people have, you know, want the best is, that’s great. Thank you. Max, what you got, man?

Max Fisk (33:39)
Doubling down. I’m going back to don’t suffer in silence. I want to shout out to my two nurse mentors back at Johns Hopkins, Juanita Spenco and Mary Barnes, in that they always say don’t suffer in silence in these instances. And I want to say that this is what Infor has been doing over the last few years, really the last few months as well.

Chris Arey (33:41)
Hahaha!

Max Fisk (34:03)
Lends itself to this. If you’re having difficulty with something, if you are stuck with a tool that may not work, if you’re stuck with this tool that may not work, talk, speak to somebody, put in an enhancement request, reach out to your Infor partner. If you’re wondering what the tool can do, there’s lots of documentation out there. You can reach out to anybody and ask. If you want to know whether or not it can do something, ask. If you want it to do something that it can’t, let us know. You know, the…

We’re here to listen and we want it to work. We’re in a weird situation where there’s a lot of us out here, partners and in for who are designing a piece of software that our goal is for it to be used as least as humanly possible. We want our users to get in there, do what they need to do and get out. So yeah, and we need help with that. So let us know, don’t suffer in silence, speak up.

Chris Arey (34:59)
Speak up. Yup. Speak up. Awesome. I appreciate the double down. It’s good feedback too. Anyway, for those of you listening in, thank you for stopping by. We always enjoy hanging out and chatting. If you have a question about today’s segment or about Infor WFM, we invite you to contact us at podcast at rpic.com. Again, that’s podcast at rpic.com.

This is RPI Tech Connect and we’ll see you next time. Thanks guys.

Brianna Zink (35:32)
Thank you.

Max Fisk (35:32)
Thanks for having me.