By Erin Hicks
FireRescue1 Staff
ESCAMBIA COUNTY, Fla. — Escambia County, Fla., EMS Chief Mike Weaver used to schedule his staff the historic way: with good old fashioned pencil and paper.
It worked just fine — but that all changed when his personnel was called to stand by and provide medical services for the 1,500 workers in charge with cleaning up the oil spill in Florida.
“This was way beyond our scope,” Chief Weaver said. “All the road supervisors and managers were on the telephone trying to staff 12 hours out. That’s a total of four going round the clock just to staff 12 hours out. We did it like that for a week.”
Weaver put his head together with Escambia Fire Department Lt. Stephen Boothe, who told him about TeleStaff, a workforce management software that allows managers to automate their scheduling, said Marie Salcedo, marketing manager for PDSI, the company that owns TeleStaff.
The fire department has been using the automated program for four years and Escambia EMS had licenses — they just weren’t using them yet. Chief Weaver called the company and they were able to get his staff up and running in just a few hours.
“Now we are staffing two weeks out, which means a great deal in terms of planning and notifying staff so they can coordinate with their regular shifts or secure childcare,” Weaver said. “It could take one supervisor at least four hours to fill 16 vacancies — with TeleStaff it can now be done in 20 minutes.”
Suitable for both fire and EMS departments, the software is customizable — you can alter it to include your state’s labor laws and certifications. And it’s not just for managers — responders and employees can use the software to track their paid time off and sick leave as well.
“All of this work that the responders are doing on the oil spill — it’s all overtime work,” Salcedo said. “Without TeleStaff, it would be time consuming and take much longer to execute.”
The software has been around for 14 years and is used by nearly 600 public safety departments across North America, according to Salcedo. She said it’s been used in just about every major disaster the United States has experienced in the past 10 years.
That means TeleStaff was used during Hurricane Katrina, wildfires in Southern California, and in the wake of 9/11, deploying emergency personnel to family notification assignments because “it can deploy first responders immediately without human intervention,” Salcedo said.
“It’s a very versatile solution but it’s designed completely vertical to public safety,” Salcedo said.
In its tenth release, up next for TeleStaff is new functionality, including an online time card and a records management system.
The software is priced based on licenses. A one-time license fee of $140 is required for any employee on the staffing roster. Implementation and equipment costs along with annual maintenance and technical support contracts are available for an additional fee.
PDSI — Principal Decision Systems International — specializes in workforce management solutions such as Telestaff. The company’s products merge advanced employee scheduling and time tracking automation with communication capabilities. You can find Telestaff on the Web at www.telestaff.com.