Why we built FlorenceRota

"Why did you decide to build a rota tool for Social Care?" was a question I got asked last week so I figured, more for our own benefit really, that I'd explain our thinking and how we arrived where we are today. 

Looking back, we first started thinking about Florence in 2015, although at the time it wasn't called that and went through various terrible incarnations such as, Nuber ("Uber for Nurses") and Staff Angel. Thank goodness someone (not me) picked the name Florence.

When we started we knew we wanted to do something big and bold. Charles was working 80 hour weeks as a junior doctor and I knew I wanted to do something that made a difference to a lot of people.

Given there are well over 3m people involved in health and social care and millions more who are unpaid carers it seemed like a pretty good place to start. The pandemic has shone the light on these professionals, thus reinforcing our choice. 

We knew that if we could use technology and innovation to create something they loved then we could find a way to make a business. 5 years later we still hold this belief, we want to help our customers and users solve problems first of all. Everything else is secondary.

Various ideas flew around until we settled on the first thing we were going to tackle. Namely, supporting care providers to cover rota gaps efficiently. 

We did this because, after talking to care providers, it was the most immediate problem that they needed help with. Everyone we spoke to had a similar challenge.

Hats off to Charles, Bunie, Ib, Hannah, Meehan and all those involved in the early days. Going from zero to something is hard. 

To frame the problem. The provision of health and care services across the UK is regulated. There are rules that help define how many healthcare professionals are needed to support the patients and residents they support. The number of doctors in a hospital or carers in a care home is not random but is based on the needs to those for which they help. 

Today, as then, at least one in ten spots in a typical rota needs to be augmented by staff from an external provider, commonly referred to as an agency. The word agency is a dirty word in the sector and we think this is a shame, and hope their critical role during the pandemic will not be forgotten too quickly.

We have focused exclusively on Social Care to date as it's Social Care that has been the most open to change. 

It pains me to say but while the NHS is a wonderful, national treasure and saved my life in 2020, it is almost allergic to any form of change or innovation. It is highly fragmented, and used by politicians as a chess piece to further their careers. I am sure there are many wonderful Civil Servants, but the ones I have met are tied up in such a way, they effectively can't do anything. 

"I need to check with this department"

"What will Policy say?"

"I am not sure what the Minster will say"

"We plan to review that in 5 years"

These are phrases we have heard. 

In a way, we have been lucky to have got to know Social Care. It is full of a wide range of amazing people. Don't get me wrong, there are some awful people who own and manage in Social Care and we have met many, but the vast majority are forward thinking people who are driven by providing high quality care and support for vulnerable people.

While we can rightly be proud of what we have done so far at Florence, eg. we have become one of the UK's largest workforce suppliers and saved the Care Sector in excess of £10m, we have always been conscious that we have only ever been focusing on those one in ten shifts or 10% of the workforce challenges.

The other 90% of the rota is not something we had touched. Given our goals that is not good enough.

We spent 2020 talking to workforce and rota companies with a view to forming a partnership. 

Simply put they would focus on the 90% and we would partner up on the 10%. Together it would make 100%. Social Care providers and workers would both be happy. We thought it made sense. 

Now, there are some great rota products out there, and some terrible ones, but there were two overarching issues we encountered during discussions.

Firstly, Social Care is not their primary market. They mainly started in retail or hospitality and have tried to crow bar their solution into care due to the pandemic. They don't understand care and it's nuances and they definitely don't understand the care workforce.

Secondly, no one wanted to discuss any form of collaboration. They were all happy with the 90% they had. They didn't mind that their customers were left with a 10% problem everyday. We couldn't understand this and how someone is happy to provide 90% of a solution.

We want to help our customers with 100% of their challenges.

We sat down and decided the only way to support the workforce and the providers was to do something ourselves. 

So we built FlorenceRota. We are the only rota tool that is exclusively built for and focused on care. We will not be focusing on retail when the pandemic dies down like the others will. 

It's early days but feedback to date has been amazing.

One said "Why did it take you guys so long to do this? It saves me so much time and there are no communication errors about shift changes. I wasn't sure if my team would like it but they actually love it."

We are also the only rota technology that can support 100% of a care provider's workforce needs because if you can't fill a gap then we can. We even allow you to connect to other agencies if you wish to. We want you to solve 100% of your problems.   

It's early days and lots to learn still but we will continue to focus on our customers, help them solve challenges and at some point we will work out how to make a business of it.

It's been a great team effort but we are just getting started.

Dan

dan@florence.co.uk