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Communicating effectively is a key skill in all professions, but in the EMS industry, it can be the difference between life and death. Effective communication encompasses much more than simply being able to talk to someone. Learning to be an active listener and picking up on non-verbal cues are great skills to have in the field, but when it comes to getting a message out to a team in a short amount of time, it takes another set of specific skills to be successful.
EMS employee scheduling software’s are a way to quickly and efficiently connect with employees throughout the day regardless of their physical location. In addition, these software’s come with many features that allow for advanced communication. To have the most success at communicating with their workforce, agencies must understand the best way to interact through mobile communication. Here are 3 very simple ways to develop mobile communication skills and how they can be used with certain aspects of an EMS scheduling software.
3 Ways To Develop Mobile Communication Skills With EMS Scheduling Software
- Have A Clear Message
- Keep Messages Concise
- Communication Needs To Be Concrete
Have a Clear Message
When notifying your team of a new meeting coming up or an open shift that needs to be filled, it is critical to be clear in what message is trying to come across and to which intended people. Employee scheduling software can help you become clearer by setting up specific groups based on aspects such as job roles, certifications, or shift times, but if the message is not clear there is a bigger chance that the intended groups will not understand what is required of them.
To combat this, it is best to separate each key point into a bullet point and save the details until those people are face to face.
Also, try to remove any elements that give them a lot of options or choices when using mobile communication. When people have choices, it tends to become a lot more muddled and unorganized than a simple message requesting a yes or no response.
Keep Messages Concise
The second step in this 3-step process is to be concise. Put simply, this means to be as brief as possible. EMS scheduling tools send messages to your staff via either text message or email. No one enjoys long messages that end up circling around the same idea or request; some people get overwhelmed, while others just become annoyed.
To avoid this, try to minimize the number of words that are used in each message. When notifications are too long, people tend to skim over the entire message. This leaves room for some people to miss critical information, and others to misconceive what the point of the message was entirely.
In addition, you can limit yourself to a character count or word count for all internal messages. Overtime this should train your brain to relay the same message in a more condensed format, ultimately making it more concise and clear.
Communication Needs To Be Concrete
Finally, the last step in this process is to become more concrete. Communication is only as strong as the person enforcing it, and if your words and actions don’t match, it is difficult to have long-term success with being clear and concise. EMS employee scheduling software has features available that enable management to require acknowledgment from their teams on important messages. If this feature is turned on, then all employees within that messaging group will not be able to have access to their self-service database until they have acknowledged the message.
To become concrete when communicating with your team, “Say what you mean and mean what you say”. This goes to say that if there is a serious situation that needs to be discussed or handled, follow through on it. Making a situation confusing by using words and actions that don’t align, can cause the entire agency to become unbalanced.
Also, keep track of who is looking at important documents, or acknowledging and abiding by new policies, or even simply responding to messages. These reports will give a good basis of how concrete, concise, and clear your messages are for your EMS employees.
Employee Scheduling Software Can Help Your Agency Improve Communication
Overall, EMS scheduling software’s have many features that can provide agencies with tools to improve mobile communication, but it comes down to management heads to ensure that these tools work at their full potential by sending clear, concise, and concrete messages to their workforce.
Want to learn more communication fundamentals to keep in mind when trying to get the message across to all demographics including EMS providers, hospital, staff, patients, and bystanders? Check out this article by Chris Cebollero titled The 7 C’s of communication in EMS.
ePro Scheduler Plus Is The EMS Scheduling Software To Help Your Agency
ePro Scheduler Plus takes your organization’s internal communications to the next level. Sending out messages and receiving confirmation of receipts has never been easier. Need to get important information out fast? ePro Scheduler Plus is the right tools for the job! ePro Scheduler offers a variety of capabilities for Advanced Communication including a workspace messaging center, custom employee messaging groups, required acknowledgment for messages, and cloud-based document management.
ePro Scheduler is an extremely flexible and scalable web-based employee scheduling software solution that makes scheduling and mobile communication easy, intuitive and cost-effective. With a wide range of options and settings, ePro Scheduler Plus becomes a fine-tuned employee scheduling machine addressing your specific needs. It is ideal for public service organizations like EMS operations, 911 dispatch agencies, and hospitals.
If you are in the EMS industry and need a scheduling software that improves your mobile communication, contact eCore Software today to find out how to request a free demo.
About eCore Software Inc.
eCore Software Inc. is a leading provider of web-based software applications. Our products have been providing value to public service organizations like EMS operations, fire departments and 911 dispatch agencies since 1998. Our flagship product ePro Scheduler is an industry leader in integrated scheduling, time & attendance and payroll and continues to be the workflow solution selected by the leading high performance EMS operations across the US. For more information on everything eCore has to offer, or to register for a free demo, visit our website!