By James Shields - 18th Nov 2019
Read time - 3 minutes
Being described as easy might not exactly seem flattering in many circumstances. However if you're a busy health care assistant or an A&E consultant on a 5 minute lunch break, easy is exactly what you want.
We conducted a survey to see what our clinical users thought of our product and service and the results were very encouraging with “easy” and ”ease of use” being the most frequent adjectives used to describe the app.
So overall:
Shifts
We have obsessed over our app and the shift experience and so it’s great to see this hard work reflected in these results. We have over 1,300 active users applying and booking shifts at their hospitals through the app and we’ve worked extensively to make this experience as simple and easy as possible.
Note, there’s nothing easy about the cutting edge technologies our engineering team use 😀.
Compliance and sign-up
Our compliance and sign-up workflow ranges from organisation to organisation and professional to professional. We offer the full “digital passport” including compliance checking with identification validation, document validation, DBS checking and professional qualification checking in a highly customisable workflow which matches the level of compliance and information governance set by each organisation.
We’re aware this multi-stepped and time lagged process can be a deterrent to onboarding and our users so we’re very proud to see 70% of user had a good or great experience and with feedback like “”self explanatory”, “Intuitive userface” and “It was easy to set up” and so we know we’re on the right path.
Notifications
Clinical staff received notification of shifts, messages, compliance checks and much more via real-time in-app push notifications. There is a certain trade off between sending notifications in (real-time whereby users get accurate and instant alerts to information so they can act immediately) and the alternative, batching notifications to send them at a convenient time - 10 minutes after the end of a shift, for example.
We’ve been monitoring this for some time and have opted for a two pronged solution where we stay with real-time in-app notifications but complement them with a weekly digest notification delivered via email. The weekly digest email will contain tailored information which the user needs to take action on (eg a reminder of timesheets which need completing or shifts available for the following week)
Improvements
Everyday we strive to improve our product and service to improve the operations of our clients and this survey has given us some great feedback. With our lowest score in this survey, notifications need further attention and I’ve touched on the next stages in the notification engines development above.
There was a second strong theme from our less satisfied users around the validity, accuracy and responsiveness of the information on the platform. This is when not all shifts are put up and so staff miss out on work or their compliance takes a week longer than it needs to because the approver is on holiday.
Issues like this rise in all systems, both digital and non-digital, but we can definitely design solutions to improve it. We know we need to work more closely with our partners to better understand all groups of users and to deliver clever technology solutions which will reduce inefficiencies and blockers.
One way is opening access to the platform to those users who might not be primarily engaged. These are users who cover management during nights and weekends, ward managers and clinical staff who are able to make these decisions but don’t have the right tools. Training and awareness is a big part of this and our on-site events and support sessions are really helping in this area.
Lastly, I want to thank the 170 users who completed the survey (we’ll be contacting the winner of the £50 Amazon voucher today) and I leave you with a sample of testimonies…
“Easy to use, responsive, acts as a personal calendar”
“I don't see how it could be any more simple”
“Easy and friendly to use”
“Easy to book shifts and see what is available.”
“Easy to claim your hours and easy to approve by managers”
"Being able to track authorisation of shifts is great.”
“Easy to navigate, very informative and a simplistic design. Impressive.”
“Self explanatory”
“Has everything”
“Easy to use and you get notifications of new shifts and when you've been booked.”
You get the point.
Survey results based on 170 users for two health organisations using various features including onboarding and compliance, shift management, timesheets and payments.
James Shields
Product Manager - Circular Wave
For all enquiries or to request a demo contact [email protected]
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Health providers using our apps
County Durham and Darlington Foundation Trust
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For their staff bank of 600 doctors, managing 1000 shifts a month,
and streamline their use of a LET bank and agency staff.
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We partnered with The Priory Group to build a national staff bank of nurses and HCAs. This has seen them reduce agency usage by 60% and substantial financial savings whilst providign new insight into agency usage and recruitment requirements.
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