Northwell Health's staff program has saved the system $200 million and brought in thousands of employees in the last 10 years.
FlexStaff, run by 145 employees of New Hyde Park, N.Y.-based Northwell, launched in 2014. Today, it has more than 4,000 employees in its pools, including individuals hired for shift-based coverage, 13-week contracts, moonlighters and internal travelers.
Carolyn Doyle, CEO of FlexStaff and a system vice president at Northwell, credits four aspects of the program for its success.
Have a solid plan and build a team
Creating a comprehensive business plan was the first step in making FlexStaff successful.
"Even though FlexStaff was initially a department within Northwell, we treated it as a separate business," Ms. Doyle told Becker's. "We focused on areas where Northwell was spending millions on external agencies and high overtime. Identifying these key areas allowed us to launch FlexStaff effectively."
Part of the plan included moving management of external staffing agencies from another department to the FlexStaff umbrella. Northwell also built a strong team of internal talent and external hires with staffing agency experience for the project.
Ms. Doyle said at first, internal stakeholders expressed skepticism regarding the value of FlexStaff. To overcome this, her team created a strategy to earn the buy-in of both leadership and staff.
"Initially, we positioned FlexStaff on an even playing field with external agencies, earning respect over time by providing high-quality contingent labor and significant cost savings," Ms. Doyle said.
Over time, this strategy allowed staff and leaders to be comfortable turning to FlexStaff for their needs until most of their external partners were phased out. Today, FlexStaff turns to external partners only for a few hard-to-fill roles.
Technology infrastructure
As the program expanded, the technology required to automate the process became more demanding. Finding the right platform — especially one that could be customized to meet the needs of each program within FlexStaff — was a top priority for the system. Northwell implemented Prolucent's workforce platform, a vendor-neutral technology, to consolidate FlexStaff and staffing agency labor on one system and automate as much of the management work as possible to drive cost-effective staffing decisions.
Finding the right technology platform allowed higher visibility to staff and leadership, as well as made reporting easier, Ms. Doyle said.
Highlight the right data
Over the years, the program has transformed because it could prove the value of its work. There are hundreds of data points within the program to pull from, but Ms. Doyle said the most effective data point to focus on was the savings to the system.
"I focused on demonstrating the value of our work," she said. "We tracked the savings generated by eliminating the margin paid to external agencies, hour by hour, for every temp. This metric proved our business case, validated by senior leadership and finance, and the savings flowed into our FlexStaff."
Those savings allow the program to pay for its infrastructure and invest in scaling operations.
Continuous investment
During the busy seasons in fall and winter, FlexStaff focuses on staffing and recruitment, but in the offseason, it drills down on workflows to find new efficiencies and continuous improvement opportunities.
"Continuous improvement and reinvestment in the program ensure we stay effective and responsive to challenges," Ms. Doyle said.