Healthcare org charts: Best practices from Ambulance Victoria

For this months HR data deep dive, we’re looking into the best practices for healthcare org charts.

Due to disruptions like COVID, it’s more important than ever for organisations in healthcare to be on top of their HR data. Especially now that there are more mandatory vaccines and certifications to track, as well as the increase in people taking sick leave.

It’s been interesting to see how organisations decided to roll out the COVAX (mainly determined by location), as well as tracking who’s received the vaccination. Here’s an example of a compliance dashboard in org.manager that showcases how Ambulance Victoria effectively managed the rollout.

Below we also feature a webinar with a special guest from Ambulance Victoria who shares her HR data journey, discussing specific examples of how they improved data management and visualisation using Navigo’s org design tool.

But first, here’s some of the most common challenges faced by healthcare:

4 things to keep in mind for healthcare org charts:

• Complex roles with multiple reporting lines / awards / qualifications

One thing we’ve found that’s unique to the healthcare industry is the way medical staff is hired. Hiring managers have a certain number of hours that need to be filled and this can be allocated to multiple people in different departments.

For instance, if a manager has to assign 50 hours, it could either be filled by 2 employees at 25 hours each or 5 employees at 10 hours each. To make things more complicated, organisations in healthcare often have employees in 2 different roles reporting to different line managers that need a different set of qualifications and certifications.

Visualising data of such complex nature is one way to understand it better and keep everyone informed.

• Visibility across the organisation

It can be difficult to gain a clear understanding of an organisation as a whole if you have a large workforce and multiple office locations. The healthcare org chart below helps all employees at Ambulance Victoria learn “who’s who in the zoo”.

The company directory includes visualisation rules so you can show/hide employee photos, a handy tool for newcomers, and also allows you to instantly email or call with just one click.

• Managing large diverse workforce

Healthcare institutions require a large number of employees in order to provide exceptional care to their patients. It’s important to be able to see how many employees are present within each department and drill down into each of these departments to see their KPIs and make data driven decisions.

The dashboard below allows Ambulance Victoria’s management team to get an overview of their organisation including metrics such as leave, vacant positions, team members leaving the organisation, etc. 

• Include volunteers in the workforce headcount

Since volunteers are not paid, they’re not added to the payroll system but it’s important to include them in your workforce in order to get an accurate picture of your resources.

The chart below represents Ambulance Victoria’s employment type. It’s divided into 5 categories – full time, part time, casual, temporary and volunteers. You can drill down into each department and also get a graphical representation to understand your data in one glance.

One thing’s for sure, teams with healthcare org charts (that are connected to live employee data) – were more equipped to effectively respond to COVID disruptions. For example, if an employee had to go into quarantine, it was easy for the line manager to identify a replacement with the necessary skills and certifications to step in.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to solve some of healthcare’s complex requirements, watch our webinar below:

If you have any questions or issues you’d like to discuss, book in some time with our workforce specialist!