Case Study - Inner South Community Health Centre
Before implementing the Simple Tools Phone Directory and In Out Board, ISCHS were using a Microsoft Word document on their intranet as their internal phone directory.
This document was:
- hard to keep up-to-date and
- slow to use.
As a result, most staff called reception when they were looking for an internal phone number. This wasted both their and reception’s time and was increasing reception’s work load unnecessarily.
They were also using a manual whiteboard to record who was in and who was out of the building. Unfortunately, it was infrequently updated and often out of date and could not seen from the 4 ISCHS sites.
It took ISCHS 20 minutes to set up a Phone Directory and half a day enter the phone numbers and set up the layouts. Staff took to using the In Out Board readily and with enthusiasm.
Immediately, the following occured:
- Calls to reception asking for internal phone numbers dropped from extremely disruptive levels to almost zero.
- Staff morale increased because as one person said "It no longer takes 10 minutes to perform a 30 second task"
- Non-authorised people - such as clients - could no longer view privileged information and staff cell/mobile phone numbers on the white board
- Staff no longer had to visit reception to find out where other staff where as this could be seen from their desks
- Admin staff knew exactly where staff were and when they would be back when they received a call on the front desk
Furthermore, the savings were phenomenal. Before implementing the Simple Tools, 200+ staff were either calling reception or using the slow and often out-of-date word document, at least 3 times a day. Staff were also making phone calls to people who weren't at their desk, calling them numerous times as they did not know when they would return.
But the Simple Tools changed this. With the Simple Tools the savings were calculated to be over a hundred thousand dollars every year.