Customer contact professionals are undoubtedly familiar with the corona test appointment line and the vaccination appointment line. They are both quickly set up and can be regarded as the front office of the corona control program. But there is also a 'back end' that had to scale up at lightning speed. Ziptone spoke with three employees of GGD-HN about building a new organization quickly and the challenge of planning and organizing in a context full of uncertainties.

 

GGD Dutch North (GGD-HN) is one of the 25 municipal health services in our country. GGD-HN works for 17 municipalities in the north of the province of North Holland. The catchment area comprises a total of more than 658.000 inhabitants.

“Basically, we have all the expertise in-house for testing, source and contact tracing and vaccination. The only thing we didn't have is the capacity to deal with this enormous size," says Gabrielle Geerdink, deputy director at GGD-HN. That is why within GGD-HN it was quickly decided to set up a 'separate company' within the GGD, which focuses on combating corona and makes use of the back offices of the GGD.

On the basis of the vaccination program - one of the components of the corona control - Geerdink explains what had to be sorted out, coordinated and set up. “It starts with choosing and setting up the injection locations. For the vaccination itself, we had to attract a lot of new staff: people who inject, but also administrative staff, security and traffic controllers. And to carry out the vaccination program you need planning and logistics skills.”

Continuous coordination with many parties

Because the GGD is not the only body that vaccinates, there must also be coordination with care parties that vaccinate themselves: such as nursing homes, the VVT ​​sector, general practitioners or mental health professionals. In addition, there is close cooperation at all levels and with various authorities, such as RIVM, VWS and the umbrella organization of the 24 GGDs: GGDGHOR.NL.

Geerdink: “So there are all kinds of lines going back and forth, although most decision-making takes place at national level: from RIVM and OMT to the minister. However, the implementation is almost completely decentralized. In doing so, we are often confronted with changes. There was a lot of confusion, especially in the beginning. Even now we have to coordinate continuously: which target group has priority now, which vaccines will be available when? In the meantime, the regular tasks of the GGD will continue as usual.”

“More people” is not enough

To set up large-scale testing and vaccination, it is not enough just to have more people; there is also something that precedes that Sandra Voerman. She has been program manager COVID-2020 within GGD-HN since the summer of 19 and is responsible for building the new corona control organization and its management.

“Initially, the existing organization creaks and squeaks – how do you, for example, as an HR department bring in 400 new employees in a very short time? At HR, for example, the number of recruiters was immediately increased. Capacity has also been increased at ICT, because the number of end users with a laptop increased rapidly. The financial department saw an enormous increase in the number of transactions and changes.” Voerman also confirms: processes that you set up cannot be perpetuated quickly, because everything is constantly changing.

Scale up quickly

Yet hundreds of people have been hired in a short period of time for various roles: from source and contact investigators, test lane workers to vaccine workers and extra office workers. In September 2020, it became clear that planning and scheduling this group, which now includes almost 700 employees, required additional resources. “We used to use an Excel sheet in combination with Microsoft Teams to plan and schedule a relatively limited number of employees,” says Voerman, “But as we scaled up, our planning process became much more complex.”

Where there used to be two planners, there are now seven and Shiftbase, a workforce management solution, has also been implemented. Voerman: “I have had to deal with scheduling and planning before in my career. That knowledge and experience made it easier to choose a solution. Looking back now, I think we should have invested in a WFM solution sooner – the scale-up went much faster than expected.”

Planner team expanded

One of the 'new' planners is Marit Boekel, also recruited in the summer of 2020 as a planner for the corona team. Boekel: “Through its own recruitment channels, HR ensures that people come on board and are trained. Then comes the planning department. We ensure that employee data is entered in Shiftbase. All employees have zero-hour contracts. We take into account their availability preferences per day of the week when scheduling employees. They can always adjust those preferences on a weekly basis, three weeks in advance.”

Boekel, as a planner, also has to deal with a large number of variables, some of which are quite unpredictable. “Our planning for the test lanes is determined by the number of appointments made with the corona test appointment line. But everything plays a role in this: whether the schools open or close, the weather conditions and what is said in a press conference. For example, the injection policy and the availability of vaccines play a role in the occupation of the vaccination streets. With certain adjustments to the RIVM policy, you could assume an increasing demand – everything has to be arranged in the short term to properly respond to this – while in practice that demand does not materialize. Are you going to hire extra people when they can't get to work? You want to keep employees on board, because if it does get busy at a certain moment, you really need them. And it is not the case that everything can be rolled out immediately after a cabinet press conference, we are not always informed well in advance.”

Complex puzzle

Boekel: “Employee planning remains a complex puzzle that we have to solve time and time again. A colleague from PlanMen works with us in our team, PlanMen also helped this organization with the rollout of Shiftbase. Since I started working at the GGD, my experience in the field of planning has increased considerably. I now feel like a planning professional: it really is a profession. The organization has also fully embraced this discipline. And also let go: people see that the process is now going well.”

Before Boekel came on board at the GGD, she gained experience in the events business, among other things. “Ensuring that you are ready when a large-scale process gets under way also plays a role here. Even when you are faced with surprises. Part of that is, for example, that you always keep some capacity in reserve, so that you have room to respond to sudden changes.”

Capacity planning

GGD-HN is also continuing to build capacity planning. Voerman: “We already know that we will have to scale down in due course: how do you deal with employees when you close locations? How do you deal with temporary contracts? In that respect, I think that planning and forecasting have become much more important for the GGD. We don't know exactly what we need next year yet. But what we have now built up in terms of structures and processes will in any case remain – if only as a pilot organization. It has also been reconfirmed for me that you should be well supported with tooling and with specialists who think along with you. For example, how do you carefully register all hours, so that the processing of expense claims from various employers of hired personnel runs smoothly and efficiently? You can make that easier by letting the output of our WFM tool Shiftbase be the input for the invoice. In addition, I think that thinking and acting in clear structures, also in terms of management - that may sound a bit militaristic - is very helpful. This cannot be done off the cuff.”

Search for new balances

Another insight that is emerging is that a new balance is emerging between central and decentralized. The 25 regional GGDs have GGD GHOR as their umbrella organization. Although most decision-making takes place at national level, it is also policy that implementation is almost completely decentralized. Gabrielle Geerdink about this: “A pandemic really requires a national organization, which is why the umbrella organization GGD GHOR has recently been strengthened considerably. Of course there are also things that you have to organize regionally, because of the differences between, for example, urban and rural areas. But I think that what can be done nationally should also be tackled nationally. Our country is not so big that 25 organizations would also have to manage this separately.”

Voerman also thinks that, despite the differences between regions, more central control is possible. “You can standardize the applications you use for planning or processes, such as adding a new location in Coronit. However, choosing between standardization and taking local differences into account is a field of tension. Because a large city such as Rotterdam deals with GGD issues in a different way than, for example, North Holland with more rural municipalities. Think of the net roll from the GGD or the way you deal with injection locations around corona: fine-meshed or limited but large-scale?

Hats off

Since the first lockdown in the Netherlands - March 2020 - we are now a year further. Large numbers of people have worked hard all this time, including in the back office of the GGD. They are constantly exposed to criticism of the GGDs, among others. How do they deal with that? Geerdink thinks it is unfair that the GGD is being referred to. “Signaling problems is fine. But hardly any investments have been made in support of the GGDs in the past twenty years. For example, the shortcomings of the digital appointment system were immediately pointed out. No other suitable system was available in the short term.”

Planning professional Boekel responds soberly: “It is never nice to hear that there is so much criticism. I try not to take it too personally. I also realize that many people have no idea at all what goes on behind the scenes here. What I've seen happen here since July: hats off." (zip tone)

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