UNA local members involved in the regularization process to reduce reliance by Alberta Health Services on overtime, extra shifts and casual hours have the option of using an Excel worksheet to record staffing replacements.
The Weekly Staffing Levels Monitoring Worksheet as designed by AHS to supplement data collected during the regularization process agreed to in a Letter of Understanding negotiated in the current provincial Collective Agreement.
The goal of the province-wide project is to have local joint committees identify worksites and units that require heavy overtime, extra hours or the use of casual employees to function, and to increase FTEs or post positions to convert those hours into regular hours.
This objective grew out of the widespread recognition among UNA members that nurses have been working too much overtime and too many hastily scheduled shifts and that AHS has been too reliant on casual employees without full benefits. Regularizing these hours will help control costs, boost continuity of care and improve quality of care.
UNA also believes the process can lower the stress experienced by nurses by reducing mandatory overtime and short-staffing,
Under the process agreed to in the LOU, Joint Workforce Regularization Process Local Committees are expected to work at the local level to find where extra hours are being scheduled and look for opportunities to create new positions, much as Professional Responsibility Committees (PRCs) now operate.
The LOU called for the collection of 12 months of historical data. However, since such information was not readily available or easily gathered, JWRP Local Committees may agree on an alternate time period over which data may be gathered.
For more detailed information on this alternative, please read the UNA-AHS memorandum on the worksheet. Click here to read a copy of this memorandum in PDF format. |
