September 17th, 2004

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Technology
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Nursed by the Lowest Bidder

The always-insightful Roland Piquepaille references an article in the Boston Globe about an innovative solution to nursing shortages:

Registered nurses at Nashoba Valley Medical Center are doing what few of their counterparts anywhere can do: logging on to their computers and bidding on working shifts that have openings.

Under this system, the hospital posts shift openings and the highest hourly rate it is willing to pay. Nurses willing to work at least four shifts a month then may bid on the work and pay, as long as their bids do not exceed the maximum pay offered. Successful bidders are notified by e-mail. “More than 50 percent of our nurses are now using this software,” he added.

Obviously the nursing union doesn’t like it, but it sounds like a pretty smart idea if it works. On top of any other benefits, it frees up supervisors’ time from chasing down employees and asking them to take shifts.

What if this model was extended to all shifts for less-specialized work? What if all the employees of a MacDonald’s franchise could bid on the shifts they wanted? Those who worked the crappier, weekend, late-night shifts would probably make more than those working popular daytime shifts. You’d obviously have to have some regulations in place to ensure everyone got a minimum number of hours, but it’s an interesting mmeans of empowering employees.

Comments: 6 Responses so far

Jeff Running
September 17th, 2004
1:09 pm

It wouldn’t take much effort to help your coworkers receive higher wages. A few well placed bids and they would receive the maximum pay. I wonder if they have anything in place to keep employees from artificially pushing up the value of a shift.

Why is it I always look for the loopholes?

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Chris
September 17th, 2004
4:03 pm

I would guess the lowest bid wins the shift, not the highest.

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Jeff Running
September 17th, 2004
5:36 pm

So, I guess the way to beat the system would be to not bid against each other. That would guarantee the highest pay level.

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Sue
September 17th, 2004
7:03 pm

I really like this idea. Too bad we can’t do it with union jobs of all kinds… the person who’ll take the cheapest collective agreement gets to come on board! :D

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Sue
September 17th, 2004
7:07 pm

Er, wait… that would negate the whole “collective” thing. I was trying to describe the system they use for selling government T-Bills actually… everyone submits their sealed bid to the Bank of Canada, then the Bank chooses a rate based in combination on the average of bids and their target rate for the T-bills. Then everybody who submitted a bid gets to buy T-Bills at the chosen rate, regardless of whether it’s above or below their bid.

Translation: members of a union submit their proposed wage package to the employer, the employer selects a mid-point of the bids and their target wage, and then everyone gets to choose whether they’ll take the selected wage package or go find employment elsewhere.

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'nee
September 17th, 2004
9:41 pm

The way it appears to be constituted now, I’d say “Holy race to the bottom, Batman!” It’d be a super idea if they were only choosing their shifts, not their pay; if the hospital was offering higher pay for unpopular shifts, say. It simply sounds like the nurse willing to work the shift for cheapest gets it. Although the nurses currently say they often get the top rate, there’s no guarantee. The potential is there for this software to be used in some other field where there’s not a labour shortage and thus a surplus of shifts: the law of competition should work for the majority of nurses during our current nursing shortage, but I’ll bet you anything that this software will eventually hit unskilled markets, places like WalMart who refuse to schedule their employees at all, and then the fun will begin.

It’s certainly an ingenous little piece of software, albeit slightly evil.

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