Deputy helps St Joseph’s Hospice give the best care possible to its patients

Established in 1905 by the Religious Sisters of Charity, St Joseph’s in London is among the oldest and largest hospices in Britain.

“St Joseph’s Hospice is a charity organisation that cares for people with end-of-life care and palliative needs,” says Su San Chan, Head of HR.

As an independent charity, all of the much-needed services provided by St Joseph’s Hospice are completely free of charge to all residents living in the east and northeast boroughs of London. These services cost over £15 million a year and are supported by fundraising and donations, as well as the work of volunteers.

St Joseph’s Hospice employs a team of around 380, a majority of which are nurses and healthcare assistants.

With such a big team, creating rosters was a time-consuming exercise that was made challenging with the Excel system the hospice formerly used.

“Basically, they had an Excel spreadsheet and they worked on it six weeks in advance and they published that for staff on the noticeboard,” explains Su.

Rosters also had to address staffing requirements, such as having a set number of nurses on for the morning and evening shifts.

“The main challenge is getting shifts filled,” says Su, adding that managers would call around staff until someone was able to cover a shift that needed to be filled.

“The temporary workers sometimes lost out because when it came to filling a shift we started contacting people alphabetically in order from the top of the list [from A], so if your surname started with a ‘Z’ you would hardly ever get called in for a shift.”

St Joseph’s Hospice did a free trial with Deputy in October 2017 before signing up for a premium plan in November. Su says she found the customer support and online tools very useful in rolling out Deputy.

Deputy has helped St Joseph’s Hospice streamline its systems, especially for management, and encouraged better attendance and communication with staff.

“Staff now know what shifts they are working on because they have the smartphone app. They are not coming in for the wrong shift. Before, sometimes when they were scheduled to work on the late shift they came on the early shift. It also sends notifications to them,” says Su.

Deputy has also helped the hospice, particularly as a charity, save all-important time and money.

“Deputy has helped us in the way of cost-saving – reducing our agency use and utilising more of our temporary workers, like staff nurses and healthcare assistants,” explains Su.

“It gave us a lot of time in terms of contacting candidates and, through the app, opening the shift out. It’s saved at least half-a-day or a day’s work calling around temporary workers.”

The hospice’s community palliative care team (who provide in-home care for patients) and its doctors are now also looking to implement Deputy.

With less staffing issues and administration to oversee, management can now focus on the more important tasks at hand. Su muses: “I can now concentrate on my HR work and now the clinical team can concentrate on providing the best clinical care for our patients.”