Time Off and Teamwork

‘Co-production’ is a long-standing practice and a newly minted hot topic in social care. It is based on our ability to involve all relevant people, or ‘stakeholders’ as they say in corporate meeting rooms, in the process of care design. It guarantees that the people who are utilising a care service are involved in the production of that care. An undertaking that lies at the heart of person-led care.  

If people with support, families and commissioners expect this of care providers, then it is only natural that those care providers should demand it from their software suppliers as well. 

At Nourish Care, co-production is central to our design process. It bridges our technical expertise with our user’s care experience to produce effective, efficient solutions. Our user’s input guides our development, with feature requests, feedback forms and beta testing being just some of the essential ways we keep our user’s experience central to our development.  

The latest Innovation to emerge from this process is our new ‘Time Off Management’ functionality for Nourish Rostering and Community. We know that managing rosters is one of the most demanding aspects of providing home care, for both coordinators and carers. We developed our Time Off Management feature to address these challenges directly based on extensive user feedback, advice and industry insights.  

Our new functionality is designed to simplify your time off processes, making it easier to manage leave, maintain coverage, and ensure a smooth operation for everyone involved.  

The features of our new Time Off functionality are all directly tied to the feedback and input of our users. 

Holiday schemes allow for a group of settings to be built and then applied to relevant carers. This grants customisability and flexibility to coordinators while removing the need to configure each carers holiday settings individually. You can group holiday accrual, reference periods, pay methods and more to make the complexities of specificity a simple activity. 

We found the denominator of our feature requests for time off functionality was customisability. It is the most effective way to support the varied and at times unpredictable home care provider’s scheduling needs. 

Features like year start dates for holiday accrual, carry over time settings for different time off types and pay calculations all vary from service to service, and across different governments and geographies. For example, the holiday pay reference period in the UK is 52 worked weeks while in the Republic of Ireland it is a 13-week reference period. It was vital we build these features with the freedom for our users to customise the settings and wrap them around their unique service. 

We have also included a manual entitlement adjustment for coordinators for precise control when desired. A need we discovered when talking to a lot of the participants in our beta testing phase. 

Of course, it wouldn’t be Nourish without analytics and reporting functionality as well. We have a fantastic analysis page to help administrators keep track of their carers time off. It includes a calendar view of all booked, requested and refused time off, a chart of absence types e.g. holiday, sick, bereavement, a table view of the adjustments made to their carer’s entitlement, a table view of requests, their status and the option to filter or edit them as desired. 

We built several key new time off functions into our carer app as well. This gives more insight and control to carers. With our new Time Off Management functionality carers can request leave directly from the rostering app, simplifying the process of requesting time off for a variety of reasons including holidays, sickness and bereavement.

Carers can use the app to review their remaining time off allowance and keep track of requests. We centralised all this information to further our app as the leading carer support platform in home care. Information is power for a carer on the go and with this new functionality we continue to develop our ‘all-in-one pocket’ solution. It provides an overview of their currently accrued time off and helps to make the process of defining availability and accrual more straightforward for everyone involved. 

Carers can use the app to review their remaining time off allowance and keep track of requests. We centralised all this information to further our app as the leading carer support platform in home care. Information is power for a carer on the go and with this new functionality we continue to develop our ‘all-in-one pocket’ solution. It provides an overview of their currently accrued time off and helps to make the process of defining availability and accrual more straightforward for everyone involved. 

For non Nourish users who want to learn more about our approach to co-production and working with us to support their home care service, book a demo. 

We have spent years working on our rostering system to make this as quick and straightforward as possible. Something we could only achieve thanks to co-production with our users through our beta testing processes. We spoke to Samantha Rabvu, Care Manager for TLB 24/7 Healthcare, about her experience participating in our Time Off Management beta. 

“We were paper based for annual leave requests,” explained Samantha. “Which meant someone had to fill in a form and scan it or take a picture of it. Then we were constantly just printing so I could give it to the person who’s approving annual leave. So when the offer to take part in a beta test for time off came along I just thought. ‘I don’t know what it is going to look like, but it sounds like something we could really use.’

“It offered the chance to cut out the middle man, the printing, and give power to both our carers and our coordinators. It was the chance to move to real time updates, rather than requests from a variety of platforms. In December last year we had a whole lot of annual leave requests. Honestly, we lost track of them due to the volume and variety of requests. Which was a major concern for us. So, when I saw that you were building something that could show us how many people are asking for time off and those who are already taking time off before approving any more, it was a game changer for me.” 

“I felt very involved,” said Samantha. “I could see the team was really drawing out our feedback with the questions they asked. ‘How is it going?’ ‘How are you guys using it?’ ‘Are there any adjustments we should make?’ I felt like a real partner that the things were saying were being considered. When we saw one of our suggestions in the next update it was amazing. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one suggesting it, but it was awesome.  

“We were involved throughout the process, even my team here was quite involved. Any issue that they had, they knew they could bring it to me, and I would pass it on. That way we always got things resolved.” 

“They were on it,” said Samantha, “They were on the money. It was so easy. If there was an issue, I’d send a screenshot and they were on it, we looked at it in depth, it was awesome. I had a main contact point but worked with several different members of your team. I just knew that they were there. They had our back, no matter what.  

“They are awesome, friendly, approachable, and we could rely on them 100%. Even the way bad news came was awesome. When something wasn’t ready, we always knew that it was still in development, it’s just not ready yet. We understood because of the communication, and we trusted your team.” 

“We’re on the right track,” said Samantha. “This was a great starting point for me. It was fantastic. Even though I was a little unsure at the start, digital wise, this isn’t something i had a lot of experience with. The process helped us to develop skills and tactics on how to navigate the rest of the digitalization roadmap, which is great.  

“So, I’m hopeful. I’m looking forward to it, it’s exciting, because I feel involved in the process. I feel like we are growing with you, and we can build something great together.” 

The future of social care will be shaped by co-production throughout the entirely of our sector. Lived experience, collaboration, data sharing, all fold together under the guiding philosophy of teamwork and community. We received over 150 feature requests for more advanced time off functionality. Which was the starting point of our development cycle, and a continuing example of our approach to digital social care solutions. 

We still have a long way to go, and we are very excited about the journey. Why don’t you join us?