Customer.
How Mercy leveraged Works to lift fill rates, cut incentive and agency spend by $100M+, and reduce RN turnover.
The combined team began by modernizing Mercy's procurement of long-term agency labor with Works Flex, streamlining burdensome legacy processes and refocusing the experience on a critical but often overlooked stakeholder — the clinical hiring manager.
Mercy then implemented Works OnDemand to power autonomous open shift recruitment across their 55-hospital system, predicting scheduling gaps in advance and intelligently recruiting the best-fit clinician for every open shift. This enables Mercy to leverage a more flexible workforce — a combination of their core workforce, regional and local float pools, and internal gig nurses — while AI identifies the appropriate incentive premium to fill each shift without overspending.
The program has expanded beyond inpatient nursing to cover allied health clinical roles and many non-clinical functions. In 2025 alone, Works filled approximately 2,000,000 shift hours through Works OnDemand. Since launch, Mercy has attributed over $100M in direct premium and agency labor savings to the collaboration.
What Were Mercy's Goals?
Drive Workforce Efficiencies
Existing efforts to plan for and fulfill open shifts required constant manual interventions from unit leadership and central staffing teams, preventing focus on higher-order priorities such as staff development and patient care.
Attract and Retain Quality Talent
Mercy shifted from a basic “hire and retain” mindset to a focus on innovation — providing core staff with flexible work options such as shorter shifts and a direct-employ gig model for employees with higher flexibility needs, capturing as many work hours as possible from clinicians in their communities.
Decrease Premium and Agency Spend Sustainably
The Works platform allowed Mercy to manage premium spend from an enterprise-wide mindset, distributing Works hours more widely across core staff. Systemwide fill rates jumped from 85% to 93% while premium labor spend dropped by over $100M.
Solutions.
The partnership began with a proof-of-concept and heavy development support from Works. Mercy and Works integrated Mercy's existing scheduling solution, SmartSquare, with Works OnDemand to power fully autonomous shift recruitment across all staff types — core, part-time, float, direct/gig, and contract. After a year, Mercy implemented UKG for core scheduling, and the Works team facilitated a seamless cutover for open shift claiming.
The partnership continues with a co-development, data-first mindset, consistently monitoring fill rate and cost target achievement at the unit level through the Works OnDemand Dashboard.
Creating a More Flexible, Efficient Workforce
Works lets Mercy design a workforce model that supports sustainable labor costs, maximum flexibility for staff, and the ability to rapidly address staffing needs. Mercy operates across regions with standardized workforce groups — each with a unique mix of FTE requirements, base pay, and incentive eligibility — managing the full ecosystem with automation rather than added administrative burden.
Works OnDemand's tiered distribution drives cost savings. As shifts become available, Works exposes them proactively to staff based on Mercy's preferences, most often sequenced by average hourly cost. Shifts three weeks out may be visible only to core and part-time staff, while shifts three days out are visible across all workforce layers — achieving high fill rates while keeping labor costs sustainable.
The pandemic taught us what I believe the frontline nurse has been asking from us for years: They want flexibility. Now, they have full control in the palm of their hand with the app. They're deciding how, when and really why they're working, and what units they're working on.
Dr. Betty Jo Rocchio Senior Vice President & Chief Nursing Officer, Mercy Impact.
Summary
Using Works' AI-driven automation engine and dynamic shift pricing, Mercy identifies which clinicians are available for specific open shifts, assigns the most appropriate incentive, and automatically fills each shift — driving consistently high fill rates while ensuring premium spend goes only where it is needed most. The result: direct savings in excess of $100M and a meaningful reduction in frontline leadership admin burden, all while giving coworkers the flexible work options they want.
Works creates a mechanism where it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Your fill rates go up while you watch the amount of money you spend on incentive shifts go down.
Dr. Betty Jo Rocchio Senior Vice President & Chief Nursing Officer, Mercy 
