Customer: Bolton at Home

Sector: Housing

Summary: Shift planning to support 24/7 integrated customer service

Bolton at Home is a social housing provider and owns 18,200 homes. It also provides the Careline community alarm services which supports over 6,500 older customers across all tenures 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Creating new 24/7 shift patterns enabled the call handling and mobile response provision to better meet increasing and variable customer demand whilst delivering productivity and efficiency gains.

When designing roster options, Working Time Solutions’ consultants helped Bolton at Home analyse historical and projected demand data, overlay operational processes and constraints and factor in elements such as task scheduling, holiday entitlements, training requirements, absence management and cost structures.

We worked collaboratively to analyse demand across departments on a daily, weekly and seasonal basis and used the shift pattern design tool in our WORKSuite® software to deliver a range of options to engage employees with.

Our consultants also created a cost benefit analysis of the options and a detailed report highlighting best practice recommendations.

“Changing to demand-led shift patterns was a key element in the strategy to restructure vital services for our vulnerable customers. The options developed with WTS ensured we could reduce complexity, increase efficiencies and support employee well-being.

“The software and insight provided by WTS was crucial to effective demand planning and quickly delivering a range of optimised shift patterns for our employees to consider.”

Julie Riley, Head of Older People Services, Bolton at Home