STUD: Prefero

Prefero - work schedules people actually want Norway has in no way been immune to the challenges following the war of our era, Covid-19. It has clarified which roles and industries that are our most important line of defence and critical workers. A common denominator to many of these positions is that they are shift workers, health professionals, sales personnel, police, and safety workers. Most of these do not have an option to bring their work to a home office or make flexible adjustments of their hours if needed, but they are receivers of schedules with details of when they are needed at work through the week, the weekends and bank holidays. It is usually managers, or appointed employees, that uses much of their valuable time to develop these schedules. A task that can be boresome, frustrating and ungrateful. Between regulations, company needs, and union demands to be respected, it is close to an impossible task for a human being to create good schedules that regards the workers wishes and needs as well. Consequently, workers are assigned shifts that leave them displeased and exhausted because the plans are not tailored to their needs. Healthcare services have seen particularly hard consequences regarding working conditions through the covid crisis. Close to all municipalities report challenges in recruitment of nurses and 72 percent of nurses in the municipal healthcare services consider leaving their jobs due to understaffing, high physical and psychological pressure, and dissatisfaction with the scheduling. Since we are passionate about giving workers a good work-life-balance, we have created an artificially intelligent robot that thinks with its heart. The robot accommodates both laws and regulations, to ensure enough downtime, and the individual wishes to provide the workers with involvement in the scheduling decisions. To make this caring robot easily available for the employees, we have developed a user-friendly website that will become the manager's best friend. Not only does it work as a personal assistant and advisor in the daily doings, but it cuts down pressure in the inbox because the employees are able to inform the robot of their wishes directly and communicate easily through the swap-market. The goal of the STUD-ENT project was to make Prefero ready for a full-scale commercialization, both national and internationally. This goal is for the most part met in the private market. However, due to the turmoil in the healthcare services, the primary focus has been placed there to aid in one of Norways largest and most important professions. As of now, there are no players in the market capable of serving the whole shiftworker segment providing these services at such a high quality level when faced with such scheduling complexity. However, thanks to STUD-ENT, we are well underway to achieve this maturity.

We aimed at measuring how easily and effectively Prefero could create higher-quality work schedules for management and employees. This without breaching working laws and by achieving high satisfaction levels, reducing communication and time spent on producing and upkeep in comparison to previous, and usually manually produced, schedules. Early 2021, we started piloting with the healthcare sector, and it has been a busy year tailoring Prefero to serve the complex set of needs faced within both state and municipal healthcare services. This pilot has been valuable, but also prolonged the intended timeline and delayed the real-life measurable results. However, these measurements will be available in the new year as several full-scale and yearlong tests will be done within the healthcare sector. Thanks to STUD-ENT, we are well underway to achieve the necessary AI maturity to serve healthcare, and we expect the improved work schedules to have a profound effect on work-life balance.