As employee engagement levels rise, you should also see happier clients and a higher quality of client care. Keep reading as we explore how NDIS software increases employee engagement, along with how you can get the most out of your software.

Employee Engagement Is Key to Excellent Patient Care

Recent research shows that high employee engagement leads to better overall productivity, patient care, and patient satisfaction.

When team morale improves, employee performance does too. Your workforce has the energy and enthusiasm required to work well and create a positive patient experience. In turn, this can improve patient well-being and lead to business growth.

It's not necessarily that unengaged team members are unwilling to provide quality care. They are often simply less capable of doing so. Burnout, which can take the form of stress, exhaustion, and poor mental health, prevents them from working at their best. 

Removing the environmental stressors that cause low support worker morale can have a direct impact on patient care.

The Employee Engagement Challenges Facing Organisations

Carers are particularly vulnerable to burnout. Many support workers struggle with irregular working hours, low job security, and financial stress. Burnout and low employee morale can also negatively impact employee retention, which can put extra pressure on your workforce.

Add to this the events of recent years, and employee engagement is proving a major challenge for NDIS providers. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated many of the existing employee engagement issues while creating greater demand for carers.

For NDIS providers, it is increasingly important to boost engagement, attract and retain talented team members, and ensure that low team morale doesn't reduce productivity.

5 Ways NDIS Software Increases Employee Engagement

NDIS software can help your home care agency tackle the issue of burnout and increase overall employee engagement and enjoyment at work. Let’s discover how: 

Better Work-Life Balance

Poor work-life balance is a major contributor to low employee engagement. Many NDIS support workers fit their work around other commitments, such as a second job, caring for family members, or studying. Depending on their working hours, they may find it hard to balance all these commitments.

Scheduling software focused on the needs of NDIS providers can help employees feel more in control of their working hours, without giving you and your back-office team members extra work to do.

Use your employee scheduler to automate the scheduling process. Ask employees to set their availability and preferred shift times via the ShiftCare carer app, and then let the software create a draft schedule for you to approve.

Less Need for Overwork

Employee engagement plummets when team members have too much work to do. As more patients are added to caregivers' schedules, their stress levels increase.

Often, overwork is a result of not having enough employees. By automating the onboarding, documentation, and rostering processes, home care software will enable you to speed up the recruitment process. What's more, you can use the scheduler to roster them efficiently so that each staff member has an appropriate workload and enough time to do their job.

Plus, home care software will automate the admin work and so reduce your staff members' workload, whether they're the back office team or caregivers.

Greater Support at Work

Work is more fulfilling when you're able to do your job well, and that is especially true for support workers. After all, any NDIS support worker wants to make a difference in participant satisfaction and well-being.

NDIS care management software will give your employees the tools they need to provide excellent care. They'll be able to access patients' healthcare records via their mobile devices, and as such, will have a better understanding of clients' needs.

Make sure to correctly set up access to patient records. Use templates to make records more useful and help team members fill them in more quickly.

Reduced Financial Stress

Financial worries can have a dramatic negative effect on staff engagement, so the more you can do to ensure team members are paid on time, the better. The software will help by providing an accurate record of hours worked, as well as integrating with your accounting systems. Encourage your staff to also attach expenses and proof to the shift record to avoid potential payroll errors.

Better Communication

Good communication can make work less stressful. Fortunately, employee management and employee engagement software can improve communication, whether it's between teams of caregivers or between managers and individual caregivers.

With online document-sharing and record-keeping in real-time, your staff can instantly share the latest information about patients. This automates the communication process, removing the need to send emails that can be easily overlooked.

SMS push notifications will also let your company send employees automated and/or personalised messages. Use them to notify team members of their schedule or congratulate them on a job well done. Make sure to stay in regular contact with staff to keep employee engagement high.

Software That Your Employees and Clients Alike Will Love

When you have happy employees, everyone benefits. Your business will be more profitable and productive. Your workload will be reduced. And perhaps most importantly of all, your patients will receive empathetic, safe care that improves their quality of life.

ShiftCare's home care software makes employee management simple. It has advanced tools for a pain-free scheduling process that balances the needs of your NDIS support workers and your patients. The document management system ensures your team members always have the tools they need to do their work well.

Discover how ShiftCare can help you boost staff engagement with a free trial.