Illinois-based Southern Illinois Healthcare (SIH), a regional network of four hospitals within a 70 mile radius, needed a modern solution to a system-wide staffing crisis. An organizational challenge was attracting and retaining clinical talent in the face of stiff competition from higher-paying health systems operating across other regions.
After researching evolving industry options and best practices, the SIH team implemented Works, an AI-powered platform, to centralize and automate their open shift staffing processes.
The results have been transformative. Works has empowered SIH nursing and allied health professionals to set preferences for when and where they would like to work extra shifts, receive daily shift opportunities via the Works mobile app, and view systemwide any shifts matching their credentials. This has greatly increased shift-claiming by core staff across units and facilities, in effect tapping into available labor supply that was invisible to leadership.
As a result of implementing Works, SIH has achieved four key objectives simultaneously:
- Improved staff satisfaction and engagement
- Reduced burden on frontline managers
- Meaningfully lifted systemwide fill rates
- Achieved first-year labor cost avoidance of over $500K through Dynamic Pricing
“Works has put the control back into our staff’s hands. It alleviates the administrative burden, and is a proactive way of filling open shifts while reducing costs – versus the reactive, high-cost way that we had functioned for many years.”
THE NEED
Address a System-Wide Staffing Crisis Without Increasing Labor Costs
Like many regional health systems, SIH faced a sustained staffing crisis due to regional competition for talent, and a finite pool of local clinicians typical for providers based in rural areas.
Larger regional competitors have more resources to use compensation to lure away critical staff. The SIH executive team understood their limitations on constantly raising compensation and incentives, and so they decided to introduce a new dynamic to their retention and recruitment strategy: Flexibility.
The daily reality of leadership, unit managers, and the staffing office was a never-ending manual scramble to fill open shifts.
The financial strain of incentives was also unsustainable.
SIH needed a solution that was easy to use for staff and could integrate with their existing, legacy scheduling system – SIH was concerned that this could limit any automation benefits depending on vendor capability.
“Every hour of every day, we were reaching out to our staff to see if they would be willing to work.”
“Before Works, trying to fill shifts was a constant, manual nightmare, often taking days out of supervisors’ weeks. Think tons of spreadsheets that were overloading us with disparate information.”
THE SOLUTION
An Automated Internal Open Shift Marketplace
SIH identified potential vendors, and were pleased when the Works team established the capability of data integration with the legacy scheduling system.
To initiate the project, SIH chose to pilot Works using their existing internal float pool. This change to the float pool, powered by Works, gave staff visibility into shifts across all facilities, allowing them to easily pick up shifts that worked best for their own personal schedule.
What SIH saw by offering this flexibility was:
- Clinicians were highly engaged and rejoiced in the reduction of coverage requests
- Ease of use was a critical factor, with nurses quickly adopting the mobile app and claiming shifts
- Early adopters became champions as SIH scaled Works to inpatient and emergency department units
- After deploying Works to the entire nursing team, staff quickly began claiming shifts across units and facilities
“We were excited to find from our research that the vendor with the strongest references and capabilities was also unique in their ability to work within our legacy scheduling environment. This helped us give new lift to our old system, and we got the solution we wanted without the large expense of a scheduling system replacement.”
“Seeing the rate of adoption within our staff, and the resulting increase to our fill rates, it is difficult to process where we would be without Works. Our leadership team’s embrace of this project, and the flexibility it affords our clinical staff, frontline engagement with Works has resulted in increased fill rates sooner than the reactive state we were in before implementation.”
EXPANSION
Expansion Across Clinical Disciplines
Following the successful pilot period, SIH opened up access to all Nursing roles across the enterprise. The implementation has since been expanded to include many critical allied health roles and departments, including Imaging, Respiratory Therapy, Telemetry Techs, Patient Care Techs and Transport. The health system is now seeing over 850 core staff members claim and work nearly 1,800 open shifts each month, and is planning expansion to Cath Lab and Patient Intake staff by 2026.
“Where it’s at now, it has truly changed my whole position, honestly.”
Challenge · Goal · Solution Framework
| Challenge | Goal | Solution |
|---|---|---|
| Open shift visibility | Incremental earning opportunities for staff | Works mobile app immediately connects all eligible users to systemwide shifts |
| Staff frustration from constant, unorganized coverage requests | Let clinician preferences drive shift alerts | Works user preferences prioritize alerts; Daily Digest collates relevant shifts into a single notification |
| Shift filling burden on frontline managers distracts from higher value work | Automate the process – both identifying candidates and assignment of incentive rates | Works integrated with existing scheduling system to automatically receive open shift data and drive the process; Dynamic Pricing automates incentive rates |
| Low staffing in high-need units and departments leading to temporary bed closures | Improve fill rates in highest-need units to avoid bed closure | Works opens up shifts immediately to systemwide eligible users; incentives are AI-adjusted to drive staff focus on highest need units first |
| Escalating labor costs due to incentive and overtime | Lift fill rates while simultaneously avoiding unnecessary labor costs | Incentive guardrails adjusted at least quarterly; Dynamic Pricing accounts for target fill-rates to ensure labor spend is allocated to the highest need across the system |
Key Wins
Process Automation Reduces Administrative Burden
Works eliminated the manual, time-consuming process of managing staffing gaps.
For Katie Albon and her team, this meant a streamlined process to fill open shifts. Instead of spending days juggling spreadsheets and manually recruiting to fill open shifts, Katie now relies on Works to automate gap detection and staffing. This shift has allowed her to re-focus on strategic initiatives, engage in proactive team development, and amplify her team’s impact across the health system.
Meaningful Cost Savings Through AI-Driven Dynamic Pricing
Works’ intelligent shift pricing ended the gaming of staff holding out for higher incentives as urgency grew.
By optimizing incentive rates, SIH filled more hours at a lower cost. This led to a 12.5% reduction in the average hourly pay rate, resulting in over $500,000 in annualized incentive spend savings without sacrificing coverage. Staff are motivated to claim shifts early.
- ✓ $500K+ in annualized incentive spend savings
- ✓ 12.5% reduction in average hourly pay rate
“Our staff are now setting alarms to grab shifts.”
Strong Engagement Via User-Friendly App
High adoption was driven by the app’s intuitive design and the demand for flexibility.
Works has achieved 83% adoption rate across the 1,400 clinical and tech staff at SIH – among the highest of any Works customer to date. Giving staff more control over their schedules and increasing their earning potential boosted morale and retention. The reliable, real-time support took the burden off of SIH’s internal team.
- ✓ 83% adoption rate across 1,400 clinical and tech staff
“It was probably the best customer support team I’ve worked with. That’s so valuable.”
Foundation for Data-Driven Staffing Across the Health System
Detailed visibility into shift demand, fill rates, and incentive ROI.
With detailed visibility into shift demand, fill rates, and incentive ROI, SIH is now positioned to make strategic staffing decisions across their network of four hospitals. The Works platform provides insights by role, unit, and time of day, allowing leadership to manage their labor spend intelligently and proactively.
“Works has put the control back into our staff’s hands. It alleviates the administrative burden, and is a proactive way of filling open shifts while reducing costs – versus the reactive, high-cost way that we had functioned for many years.”
“Seeing the rate of adoption within our staff, and the resulting increase to our fill rates, it is difficult to process where we would be without Works. Our leadership team’s embrace of this project, and the flexibility it affords our clinical staff, frontline engagement with Works has resulted in increased fill rates sooner than the reactive state we were in before implementation.”
