Buckling Under the Admin Pressures

13 August 2015 | Updated 01 January 1970

In the report entitled Mobile Working: 'The Missing link in the Future of Social Care Delivery' and commissioned by TotalMobile, 61% of respondents said they were dissatisfied with the amount of time in their working day they could actually spend with clients.

A worrying 75% of respondents said they were struggling to meet the demands of their daily caseloads with not enough staff support and little or no technology. This was having an impact on overall morale and work/life balance.

Encouragingly, 60% of respondents said that their organisations had made some sort of attempt to introduce mobile working but only 10% said it had made any significant different to their workload. The key reason for this appeared to be that only 3% of organisations had actually deployed an independent, purpose-built mobile working app. The vast majority were dependent on smartphones and laptops which led to slow response times and lack of connections. This meant they could not access files as and when they were needed out on the road.

Employing extra agency staff was seen as a ‘quick fix’ but not sustainable in terms of continuing budget cuts and did not provide any consistency between the social worker and the client.

“It is shocking to find that out of an eight-hour working day, many social workers could only find three hours to spend with patients,” commented Colin Reid, CEO, TotalMobile. “Organisations can obviously see the benefits of effective mobile working but have been unable to deploy the correct strategy to make it work.”

As service demands increased radical changes were needed, argued Mr Reid, to put better work processes in place, and the success of this would hinge on mobile working.

Effective deployment of mobile technology could save one to two hours per day, alleviating the burden of time consuming paperwork, equating to a significant increase in workforce capacity. “Only by providing an authentic mobile option designed around the way people work will organisations reap the benefits and cope with the care pressures the future brings,” commented Mr Reid. “

An astonishing 92% of respondent said that there is no way they will be able work in the same way five years from now. It is paramount that management put a workable mobile working strategy in place now because f they don't, they will fail to keep up with demand and we will see social care services crumble as frontline workers struggle to cope.”

Picture: Colin Reid, CEO, TotalMobile – “It is shocking to find that out of an eight-hour working day, many social workers could only find three hours to spend with patients…”

Article written by Cathryn Ellis | Published 13 August 2015