Nursing and midwifery e-rostering: a good practice guide

Our updated guide will help you to deliver the Carter recommendations and assist managers and frontline clinicians to identify areas of improvement within your current rostering.

Our revised guidance will enable trusts to achieve the Carter recommendations by easily identifying areas of improvement in e-rostering practices. The benefit this brings is that the right staff with the right skills will be in the right place at the right time, so patients receive the care they need, and trusts can better manage their workforce and financial efficiency.

  • Nursing and midwifery e-rostering: a good practice guide – Our guidance is an updated version to the one we published in 2016. This version reflects the increased implementation of e-rostering in all sectors (acute, acute specialist, mental health and community trusts). It describes how e-rostering can help manage staff levels ward by ward, whilst giving trust boards assurance that quality outcomes are being achieved and resources used efficiently.
  • E-rostering the clinical workforce.

Why is e-rostering important?

Staff are our biggest asset and trusts have an obligation to strike the right balance between patient safety, cost and efficiency.

Used the right way, e-rostering can influence culture change and gives staff the evidence they need to make change happen at the frontline. It gives an overview across the organisation, not only month by month, but day to day — highlighting hotspots requiring intervention to ensure safe staffing levels and efficient deployment of staff.

Open and transparent e-rostering processes help to drive greater employee engagement, employee satisfaction and wellbeing — as well as acting as a key driver for retention.

Case studies

  • Improving workforce visibility through e-rostering – This case study details how Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust procured and implemented an e-rostering system to move its workforce from paper rosters to a centralised e-roster, enhancing visibility and clarity across the service.
  • A training programme to optimise the use of e-rostering systems – This case study examines how Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust designed a training programme to enable staff to use their e-rostering system more effectively and make measurable improvements in staffing levels.

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