5 Reasons Paper Timesheets Suck
Ever noticed how much Nursing Agencies love their paper timesheets? They’re unusually wedded to those all-important and yet so-easily-destroyed pieces of paper that that are usually found scrunched up in the bottom of your locker/bag. If you’re lucky, that is - believe us, there are many worse places they can be found on a busy GP Practice, Walk-In Centre or Care Home, to name just a few clinical settings...
How do we hate thee, Paper Timesheets? Let us count the ways…
Picture the scene - the next team are making their coffee and, more importantly, you’re getting ready to leave after a long, eventful shift. You’re clutching your precious timesheet in a sweaty hand. “Can you sign it?” you ask anyone with a vague air of seniority. Nope. It has to be signed by the team leader from your shift. But where is she? Caught up with a patient? In the loo? On her way home? Who knows. Gaaaah.
So you’ve eventually found someone to sign the blasted thing - or maybe you haven’t - but either way, you now need to leave it in a dangerously over-burdened ‘in’ tray in the office. So you do - covering it with fluorescent Post-It notes with FAO PAYROLL scrawled desperately all over it - and it STILL goes missing for the best part of a fortnight. There’s a delay in signing, a delay in sending and therefore a delay in payment. Where’s the face-slap emoji when you need it?
And although in the outside world it’s 2018, nursing agencies seem to believe we’re still living in the 1980s. Now, there are lots of things I like about the 80s - 80s Madonna is definitely my favourite Madonna, and Vienetta is still the best way to finish off your Sunday dinner - but faxing or posting your timesheet? It’s time to build a time machine.
But hang on, let’s just rewind a second. To get your hands on your timesheet in the first place, you need to print it. It seems that agencies can manage to send them to you by email, but not receive them by this futuristic mode of correspondence - and if by some slim chance they do accept timesheets by email, you still have to go through the pain of points 1-3 first before you can scan and send. Anyway, I digress - the point is, you have to spend time, ink and your precious remaining patience reserves wrangling with your printer and its bluetooth connection - or lack thereof.
All the paper timesheets we’ve dealt with have been overly complicated with lots of small print, superfluous information and yet it’s still impossible to work out how much you’re going to be paid. Or when. When the money finally arrives in your bank account, you don’t know whether to be pleased or ring them up to challenge their duff calculations.
Now repeat after me: what do we want? TRANSPARENCY AND EASE! When do we want it? NOW...
The good news? Nightingale is working to improve the healthcare sector by matching independent healthcare professionals directly with the shift requirements of service providers. We’re introducing direct, paperless timesheets and invoices via the Nightingale platform, removing time-consuming admin, stepping away from agencies and their extortionate fees and giving control back to healthcare professionals. Read more here.