By Freya Purnell
One of Victoria’s largest not-for-profit providers of disability, education and senior services, Villa Maria, is using Kronos workforce management solutions to enable a more flexible working environment and improved care delivery.
Having first implemented a Kronos time and attendance solution in 2001,Villa Maria has now upgraded its payroll and rostering solutions, to gain improved workforce insights, save time managing timesheets, and to optimise personnel resource flow between its various sites and services.
With a workforce of more than 1200 staff and 300 volunteers, which is predominantly female, Villa Maria hopes to better cater to their lifestyle needs while increasing the accuracy of administrative and payroll functions.
Graeme Wickenden, chief financial officer at Villa Maria, said, “There has been a gap in our IT platform for an integrated solution that could provide time and attendance interpretation across a wide range of awards in a complex setting. Kronos gives us a holistic view of our workforce across all of our sites and allows us to make smarter and more intuitive roster decisions.”
“We can listen even more closely to our employees, take their preferences into consideration, and provide more choice in the way they work with us. This is also a great opportunity for them to tell us whether they want to expand their skills by working across other services within our organisation. We’re making good progress to use the information available to us and realistically assess our abilities to match their needs.”
Villa Maria estimates that by using the latest version of Kronos’ workforce management solutions to improve their scheduling capabilities, they will achieve a significant reduction in agency costs, as well as open doors for the organisation to develop its direct-care business model.
“We’re a diverse organisation that offers a full continuum of care, from young children with a disability through to seniors residing in our retirement or residential aged care homes,” said Wickenden.
“Traditionally we have relied on a brokerage model which sent third-party healthcare professionals to provide this service. With the advanced scheduling capabilities we are implementing with Kronos, we will be able to resource this program internally, giving us more ownership and control over the management of providing this in-home care.”
