Seniors' residences

Founded in 2010, the Résidences primarily look after older adults with cognitive or physical impairments or mental disorders.

At the young age of 28, Alix became the director of this family business. She concurrently manages two smaller residences as well. In total, Alix leads a team of 120 employees providing round-the-clock care, 7 days a week.

A Challenging Management Role

Alix quickly realized that her new position as manager had many challenges. Lacking any modern tool, she relied on Excel to manage her employees’ schedules and timesheets. This took a minimum of 20 hours of work each week.

Communicating employee constraints was at the heart of the problem. The old way of doing things was inconvenient: employees would simply write their requests on the paper schedule pinned to the bulletin board. Alix had to check the schedule in person every day, make changes, and reprint while hoping that the employees would see the new version in time. Absentees had to be contacted one by one.

Time That Costs Money

Managing timesheets wasn’t always easy either. Without a digital system, the employees relied on paper here too; at the end of each shift, hours worked were written into the timesheets by hand. Alix would then collect them and begin the laborious task of deciphering and transcribing each employee’s data into Excel.

With the old method, copying the time entries into Excel took me two full days of work every other week. Then, it was the accountant’s turn to sift through for payroll.

Priority: Seniority

Since the employees of the Residences are unionized, management must follow certain rules. In particular, shifts must be assigned according to the seniority of the employees. Alix had to create her schedules by juggling the seniority lists for every single position.

The union also required that each absence be recorded. However, since absences were managed by supervisors, there could be discrepancies between Alix’s data and reality.

A Bit of Long-Awaited Modernization

The implementation of Agendrix was not without resistance. But a little perseverance on Alix’s part and the demonstrations provided by the Agendrix team were enough to convince those who were initially skeptical to give it a try. Today, these same people recognize that they wouldn’t do without it. They particularly like always having access to their schedule online without having to drop by the office.

No more paper schedules. Since the management is now handled right in the application, Alix no longer has to spend so much time traveling back and forth. Her employees simply send her their requests and constraints, which she can check and approve at a moment’s notice. The people involved are simply sent an alert, and then see the changes appear on the schedule. Alix can even see who actually checks the changes she makes to the schedule.

Creating the schedule is also much faster; the recurrence tool allows Alix to automatically copy the shifts she chooses each week. Tasks that used to take her more than 20 hours a week now take only 5.

More Time, Less Expenses

Manual transcription of work hours is no more. When employees clock in, take a break, or clock out, the hours automatically appear in Alix’s timesheets. All she has to do is quickly double check the entries. Since excessive discrepancies between the clocked-in times and the schedule are highlighted, the process takes very little time. The verified timesheets are even exported in a format that is supported by many well-known payroll systems.

It has made our work so much easier!

One Less Headache

When it’s time to build the work schedule, Agendrix allows Alix to sort her employee list by seniority. To further simplify the work, employees who were given enough work hours for the period are automatically removed from this list. This allows Alix to move on to the next person until all of her staffing needs for each position are met.

Transparency has also improved. A log keeps track of all actions taken in Agendrix, allowing Alix to see the management decisions of her supervisors. In addition, by having access to all data electronically, Alix can provide tangible evidence of compliance to the union.