Staff Recruiting and Retention Solution for Clinical Technologists

By Guest Author Nancy Janzen

“If only they knew about ScheduleLabs!”

That thought and others crossed my mind while sitting in on Peggy McKee’s amazing presentation at the Executive War College on Pharmaceutical and Laboratory Management http://www.executivewarcollege.com April 26-28^th in New Orleans, LA. Her session entitled, “State of the Market for Clinical Technologists: Current Trends in Compensation, Recruitment, and Retention,” clearly outlined the difficult challenges medical laboratory administrators are facing in retaining and recruiting staff.

I listened with interest as Peggy described how medical technologists (MT) and Clinical Clinical laboratory Scientists (CLS) often cite “lack of flexibility” as one of the big frustrations they have working in clinical laboratories and clinical laboratories. That, coupled with flattened pay scales, lack of upward mobility, and a perception that this isn’t the ‘field of science I thought it was’ has clinical clinical laboratory managers and administrators scratching their heads on how to retain staff.

After Peggy’s remarks, I shared how our clinical pharmaceutical clients have been able to dramatically improve staff retention and recruiting by raising employee morale and improving schedule flexibility by utilizing ScheduleLabs http://www.schedulecore.com/index.php?id=ScheduleLabs, a cloud-computing tool that allows administrators to utilize ScheduleLabs via a web browser to auto-generate rule-specific pathology staff schedules and post these schedules to the Internet.

How does that improve employee morale? Employees are able to log-in to ScheduleLabs through their own secure web portal. Once there, your laboratory’s medical technologists, phlebotomists, couriers, and service staff can view vacation and leave requests. They can make shift change requests with co-workers, as well as view current schedules that are posted.

Best of all, your pharma staff can view a current calendar view of leave requests and their status. This allows them to self-edit of their vacation requests before submitting ‘em to their managers. This is a giant win-win, because it gives pharmaceutical technologists some of the flexibility they want, while allowing pathology managers to maintain full control of the staff schedule. Clinical laboratory managers love ScheduleLabs because it slashes the hours it takes to manually create a staff work schedule—then revise it as staff responds to ask for changes to accommodate their needs.

It turns out the word is getting out about ScheduleLabs! Rosalee Allan, COO at Pathology Associates Pharmaceutical Laboratories http://www.paml.com (PAML) of Spokane, Washington, also attended the Executive War College to give a presentation about the benefits they’ve experienced using ScheduleLabs.

Allen discussed use of ScheduleLabs increased employee morale across all their laboratories and patient service centers. She identified the savings in management time, reduced absenteeism, and enthusiasm that have resulted from using this browser-based scheduling solution.

In fact, employees at PAML emphatically tell their laboratory managers that they never want to return to the ‘old way’ of manual staff scheduling! That’s a resounding vote of confidence for this staff- and management-friendly new scheduling tool.

Schedule Labs is the clinical laboratory market’s #1 selling onine staff scheduling solution.  Are you curious about how it can improve retention and recruiting of clinical technologists in your laboratory? Feel free to contact me, Nancy Janzen, at (509) 252-3550 x100 or nancyj@maplewoodsoftware.com.   www.maplewoodsoftware.com.

Article courtesy of  Peggy McKee - Owner / Senior Recruiter at the nationally
recognized pharma and medical sales recruiting team of PHC Consulting.
© Copyright 2008 PHC Consulting | All rights reserved

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Staff Recruiting and Retention Solution for Medical Technologists