University of Ontario Institute of Technology - Durham College - Non-Proft & Volunteer Scheduling - Case Study

Case Study: University of Ontario Institute of Technology - Durham College - Campus Emergency Response Team in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada

Business Overview

We are a volunteer Community Services division of St. John Ambulance. We are located on a university and college campus and provide medical first response to all students, faculty and visitors on campus. We operate 24 hours per day, 7 days a week from September to April. There are two staff members scheduled at all times and an on-duty Executive Member at all times.

Currently our team consists of 51 members and have recently hired 23 new volunteers. The team was started in 2006 with 10 members and primarily only covered special events on campus. As several years passed, our team worked towards the goal of covering the campus 24/7.

Scheduling Overview

As we are all volunteers and students, scheduling around changing and complex availabilities can be difficult. Most of our volunteers have scheduled that rotate on a biweekly basis so tracking these changes can be difficult.

Previous Scheduling Method

Previously, all our scheduling was done by email. Our Scheduling Coordinator would collect availability and formulate the schedule on a weekly basis. When the schedule was created it would be emailed to all our volunteers. If volunteers wanted a shift trade to be completed, they would have to fill out appropriate paperwork with the second volunteers and have an Executive Member (Supervisor) approve the trade.

Since ShiftPlanning

The work scheduler ShiftPlanning has allowed a more streamlined approach to scheduling on a weekly basis. Rather than our volunteers emailing constantly to update their availability, we simply ask that they update online by a certain time each week. After such time the schedule is generated using the Availability report. It has also allowed us to keep up-to-date information on our volunteers in one place that is easily accessible for any location with an Internet connection. With the different schedules we are able to keep track of our mandatory training hours in addition to on-shift volunteer hours.

The ShiftPlanning team is always available... - Kirsten Moore, Scheduling Coordinator 2011 - 2012 - University of Ontario Institute of Technology - Durham College

Further

We would certainly recommend ShiftPlanning to others.