Staffing app connects skilled workers, including nurses, PSWs and lab technologists, with health-care organizations to fill short-term or part-time positions.
Staffy was founded in 2015 to connect businesses in the hospitality industry with skilled labour to fill last-minute vacancies. For example, if a server or dishwasher were needed, a restaurant could use the Staffy app to have one on-site within 90 minutes.
When the COVID-19 pandemic started and restaurants had to scale back, many workers in the industry needed jobs. Staffy started sending restaurant workers into long-term care homes to fill shifts for food prep, cleaning, and serving.
“We were soon asked to provide vaccinators, nurses, dietary aides, and personal support workers, so we began to onboard these workers to the Staffy app,” says Peter Faist, Founder and CEO of Staffy.
Throughout the pandemic, Staffy has helped long-term care homes fill critical staffing roles to support patient care, including in homes that reported an outbreak. In addition, the on-demand staffing platform supported staffing of essential roles in intensive care units (ICUs), medicine units, and emergency departments with qualified and experienced workers.
Staffy popular with major hospitals and health-care organizations
Staffy’s temporary pivot has now become permanent, with the company serving both the hospitality and health-care industries.
Through its app, Staffy connects high-quality, vetted, ready-to-work nurses, PSWs, and other skilled workers with vacant shifts in hospitals and other health-care organizations. The app focuses solely on matching workers to short-term work.
Staffy is proving popular with a growing number of health-care organizations that need to fill gaps temporarily.
“Our staff received great reviews and were asked to return,” Faist says. “We’re proud of the role we’ve played during these challenging times to help fill these gaps by connecting health-care workers to health organizations most in need.”
Workers matched with shifts in a matter of minutes
Faist stresses that Staffy is not a staffing agency. “We’re a platform that connects health-care organizations to highly qualified, pre-vetted workers to fill critical shifts at the last minute or hard-to-fill shifts like on weekends, holidays, or overnight,” he says. “What sets us apart from staffing agencies is that we use digital technology that’s so efficient we can match workers to shifts almost instantly. This means our overhead is lower, and we can charge lower service fees. We’re therefore able to pass on savings to our clients and save the health-care system money.”
With 10,000 skilled and vaccinated health-care workers on its platform, including nurses (RN and RPN), PSWs, laboratory technologists, and dietary aides, Staffy can fill shifts within minutes and has a shift fill rate of 95 per cent.
Its rigorous vetting process ensures that all workers are certified, licensed, and meet the unique requirements of each client, helping organizations fill shifts quickly with the most qualified candidates. In fact, only 20 per cent of applicants are approved through Staffy’s vetting process, Faist says, so companies can be confident about workers’ skills and credentials.
Staffy provides flexibility for health-care workers
And Staffy is also filling a need for health-care workers who want more autonomy and flexibility. “A growing number of health-care workers do not want to work for one employer, or may not want to work full time. They want the flexibility to work when and where they want,” Faist says.
Workers can use Staffy to augment their part-time or full-time jobs to get additional experience in health-care settings while going to school to improve their qualifications, to remain active as a health-care provider after retiring, or to re-enter the health-care sector.
Workers pay no fees to use Staffy and companies set fair market rates for the talent they need to hire. Staffy earns a small transaction fee for each gig. “The workers who use our platform to find shifts are independent contractors who decide where they work, when they work, and how often they work,” Faist says.
And with much talk of the “great resignation” that has come in many industries during the pandemic, health care is no different. The industry has been hard hit with staffing shortages, especially in nursing, leading to serious issues, including health-care worker burnout and emergency room closures.
Fair wages for workers, lower costs for health system
“Our mission is to use the power of technology to improve patient care by bringing health organizations and health-care workers together and ensuring patients get the care they need,” Faist says. “We’re committed to being a dependable partner to health-care providers.”
Our mission is to use the power of technology to improve patient care by bringing health organizations and health-care workers together and ensuring patients get the care they need.
According to Faist, the key element of Staffy’s business model is its efficient technology, which enables the company to fill shifts in a matter of minutes and at a lower cost than traditional staffing agencies. “As a result, we’re able to create efficiencies and cost savings for health-care organizations and the broader health system while also ensuring fair wages for workers,” Faist says.
“At a time when our health-care system is stretched, it’s critical that we look to innovation to help fill gaps. Through the Staffy platform, we can efficiently and effectively optimize health-care workers to fill gaps in staffing across multiple hospitals and other organizations where they are most needed.”
