Wokingham, 9th May 2013 – South Wales Fire & Rescue Service (SWFRS) has selected a workforce management solution from Kronos to manage the rostering of fire crews across 20 sites in South Wales, achieving optimum crewing levels which accurately match resources to demand. The system will enable SWFRS to accurately forecast staff levels, including shortfalls and over staffing, and record and manage both planned and unplanned absence.

News Facts
•
Challenged with balancing a reducing revenue budget whilst maintaining or improving the organisation’s service to the public, SWFRS sought efficiency improvements and cost savings. Upgrading its rostering and advanced planning solution would ensure that the optimum number of crew members would be available for each watch. This would reduce the organisation’s reliance on overtime to cover staff shortfalls, and reduce the level of manual administration require to manage the rosters.

•
Kronos will forecast and identify crewing shortfalls and overs at each station and by each watch, be accessible from multiple sites and will be updated in real-time.

•
At the start of each shift, Kronos will compare actual attendance and employee skill set with the planned crewing for that shift, based on optimum crewing levels, and optimum skills required.  Any shortfall may result in a fire appliance not being able to attend an incident. Kronos will therefore alert the Watch Manager immediately so that remedial action can be taken.

•
SWFRS plans to introduce a Citrix client which will enable staff to access Kronos using mobile devices. Staff will be able to access their rotas, check working patterns, book holidays, and volunteer for extra shifts, wherever they are, and from any mobile device. This is a significant benefit to the team, who struggle to regularly access a PC in the workplace.

•
Kronos provides an intuitive dashboard overview of the staffing levels at each station, giving an at-a-glance view into the number of staff at each station and where there are gaps in personnel and skills.

•
Kronos was selected following a comprehensive tender process, which demonstrated to SWFRS that Kronos had a workforce management solution that would match the organisation’s complex rostering requirements. Kronos was also able to show its solution was used effectively by other fire and rescue service organisations.


Supporting Quotes
•
Simon Macpherson, Senior Director Operations, Kronos EMEA
“Forward scheduling fire crews 24/7 across multiple stations is a complex operation with many variables such as unexpected absence and the requirement to have appropriately skilled staff on the ground. A reliable rostering solution is essential to ensure that fire appliances are always available when required and to reduce the level of non-value added admin required to manage the same job manually.”

•
Andy Davison, Group Manager -  Operations Delivery, SWFS
"Kronos provides SWFRS with a system that ensures that our workforce are in the right place at the right time, matching resources to demand.  It will give greater opportunities for staff to be able to access their availability and improve work/life balance by being able to plan time off where there is availability.  Kronos will improve the way we plan our workforce resourcing and reduce need for manual data input and calculation."


Supporting Resources
•
About South Wales Fire & Rescue Service

•
Connect with Kronos via Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

•
Subscribe to our workforce management blogs.

•
Take a look at the lighter side of workforce management in our Time Well Spent cartoons.