Undoubtedly, Perthyn is in a better position to handle 2025.

Ready to tackle 2025's challenges

Perthyn is a registered charity that provides support primarily to people with a learning disability, across both Wales and England. They support around 250 people in just under a hundred houses and they have 550 frontline members of staff.

In rolling out Sona’s Scheduling Cloud, they had a clear goal: gain visibility into their scheduling and payroll, remove overspend without affecting quality of care, and increase team wellbeing. Chief Technology Officer and Sona project lead, Andy Johnson, believes they’ve succeeded on all accounts and are now in a better place to tackle the challenges 2025 will bring.  

It's so tight financially that any tool that gives us that kind of control over those kinds of costs is absolutely vital, it is transformational. Sitting here now, I'm very proud that we put Sona in. I'm proud about how it's working and I'm proud at the change that it's made to the organization. [...]

It's only when you get the kind of visibility that we've now got that you realise just where you can tweak things. And because you're dealing with such a large staff contingent, some tweaks can save you thousands and thousands of pounds.

I think that's a no brainer, really. And you're never cutting into staff wellbeing or a person you support’s wellbeing. On the contrary, you're boosting these.

Andy Johnson, CTO

In terms of savings, Perthyn has seen:

• Up to one week per month saved for each payroll team member
• Up to two hours per week saved for each manager when creating a schedule
• 99% payroll query reduction
• 90% reduction in agency spend 
• Approx. £100,000 saved from removing payroll errors

ROI from day one

Perthyn's leadership team looked at investment in solutions with quantifiable financial ROI as the best way to support their staff and improve quality of care. Overall, they believe it's paid off from day one. 

I think we saw the benefit of Sona and started making cost savings right from day one, if I'm honest. Straight away we realised that there were bad practices that were happening because we couldn't monitor cumulative balances and things like that.

But from day one, in the regions where it was introduced, it was making a big impact and it's been positive right throughout. Constantly positive feedback and it's made a big difference. 

Kat Angell, Executive Financial Director & Business Development

Due to other internal factors, roll-out had to be exceptionally quick, but CTO, Andy Johnson, believes this worked out well. 

We went from piloting Sona in April to having everybody on it in September. Every single person in the company for the September pay was paid via Sona. I think that speaks for itself, really.

Andy Johnson, CTO

Agency spend down from £200k per year to less than £10k (by end of H1 2024)

Tackling agency spend was an important KPI for Perthyn's leadership team - and a direct way of showing their strategy was delivering quantifiable financial gains.

Visibility into the number of hours their permanent staff delivered brought on savings of around £20,000, according to Andy Johnson.

But an even greater saving came from implementing an agency usage report, where managers have to add reasons for booking agency staff, and enabling permanent team members to pick up extra shifts easily, in any home.

I think over last year [2023] we spent over £200,000 on agency staff. This year it's been significantly less.

Probably by the mid year point it's less than £10,000. It's been a huge saving. Obviously we would have incurred some of those costs anyway by having our own staff, but it's probably about two thirds of that cost when it's our own staff. So it's a good chunk of savings. 

Kat Angell, Executive Financial Director & Business Development

Simply having the option to book more shifts easily meant team members were more likely to fill in when homes were understaffed. 

I feel like people are more likely to book overtime because they can see it on their personal phones, and they have a range of shifts to pick up. 

Elle Portwood, Registered Manager

Being able to support other regions when recruitment is a little bit better off in one region compared to the other, has helped helped as well.

It definitely has reduced the need of agency. It's reduced a lot in Carmarthenshire because we've had staff picking up from Swansea and vice versa.

Richard Gibbs, Regional Support Manager

Consistency and quality of care have also improved thanks to permanent staff taking on more shifts. 

The other advantage is that agency workers don't have the same level of training and the people we support don't know the staff who are coming to us through agency. So it's nice that now we can use our own staff and they know that even if it's a support worker from a different house, they're still going to be supported in the same way with the same values.

Kat Angell, Executive Financial Director & Business Development

80h+ saved in payroll admin time

With up to 100 payroll queries each month, Perthyn's admin team found themselves overwhelmed in the days between submitting pay slips and running payroll. Kat Angell, Perthyn's Executive FD, described how the phone would be going constantly the day after the pay slips went out. 

As these errors were usually highlighted by staff that was being underpaid, they also didn't have full visibility into potential overpayments. 

It's definitely given our administration team at least probably a week of per month, being able to focus on other tasks now which are more important to their roles. [...] We can run reports which will proactively tell us before we even get to the point of seeing an overspend, and we can know what to expect and explain the reasons for it and plan around it.

We've seen some significant savings in that respect. There's definitely tens of thousands of pounds that we've saved in terms of not having those overspends.

Kat Angell, Executive Financial Director & Business Development

Additionally, registered managers are also saving time on scheduling staff:

It's probably saved about two or three hours a week, I would say, for each manager.

Richard Gibbs, Regional Services Manager

Increased staff morale

One additional benefit of rolling out a next-generation scheduling solution was the boost to staff morale. 

For the payroll team, not having to resolve queries or manage employee dissatisfaction contributed significantly to their wellbeing. 

For the first time our payroll team were actually able to take annual leave now around payday once the payroll's been sent, whereas before they knew that those three days, they were never going to be able to take any annual leave.

So it's nice for me hearing that feedback that staff morale is happier now. I think that was one of the biggest complaints we were experiencing two years ago - staff dissatisfaction, which impacts our staffing levels and recruitment challenges.

It's been surprising how important that was to people but really rewarding. I think Sona's made a big difference to staff morale.

Kat Angell, Executive Financial Director & Business Development

Frontline teams were also positive, particularly about their new ability to pick up shifts in other houses. Additionally, managers felt supported with tracking the total number of hours each staff member did and ensuring they respected their policies and contracts, helping to maintain quality of care and prevent burnout.

It's all been very positive feedback, to be honest. It's enabled staff to be able to see what other houses need, in terms of shifts as well. Before Sona, I would say that staff were quite anxious about working in other services.

And with Sona, they've been able to pick it up themselves and actually take that plunge. [...] I think Sona's helped with that. We've had quite a lot of staff giving positive feedback after picking up shifts in other houses and other regions through Sona.

Richard Gibbs, Regional Services Manager

Recruitment and retention benefits

Being spread across Wales and England with some rural locations, Perthyn has struggled on occasion with recruiting enough staff to cover their commissioned hours, which meant they had to resort to agency usage.

Thanks to a series of changes implemented by the leadership team, most of their locations are now fully staffed. 

Since Sona's gone in, our recruitment rates are much better and our retention rates are better. Now, Sona has to have played a part in that. You could argue there's other things in there as well.

There's not going to be a silver bullet to fix all of these problems. But I think having Sona, it's absolutely one of those things that's kept people. I was in the office and there was a support worker there a couple of months ago, and I was talking to them, and they were saying that they were offered a job with another provider, but they didn't go because they didn't have a computerised rota system, and they didn't want to go back to having paper rotas, so that was an interesting one.

Andy Johnson, CTO 

Being able to show the wellbeing and financial benefits that come with having access to schedules six weeks in advance or picking up extra shifts easily has contributed to this success.

I think it's potentially helped when we're recruiting support workers and their line managers. Now that we can advertise to people that we're able to provide them with rotas in advance, they know what they're going to be working six weeks ahead. So, they've got better visibility. With rota management being such a challenge across the Social Care sector, not everyone has oversight of what they're going to be working over the coming weeks.

Kat Angell, Executive Financial Director & Business Development

Frontline team members also agreed that they would recommend to their friends to join digitised Care organisations. 

If my friend was to mention about Sona, I'd definitely recommend it. It's good to have and very easy to use.

Charlie Williams, Support Professional

Feeling like a valued partner with Sona

Supported living organisations like Perthyn offer a vital service to those in need, but due to the level of complexity their operations imply, most providers aren't able to cater to their needs. 

In terms of critical buying criteria, Andy Johnson outlined:

• Being able to see a schedule organised by supported person
• Easy-to-book shared care
• Reporting features that clearly show commissioned hours versus delivered hours
• Regular feature updates

The approach Sona took towards delivering the product and ensuring it was something that made a difference to us - that definitely felt like it wasn't just about selling a product. It was about putting in a solution that did what we needed it to do. And it certainly felt to me that the happiness of the customer came very high up.

And I think what I found exciting about Sona was the fact that you had this constant incremental improvement.

It's almost a different product because it's changed and grown so much. And I'm excited to see where it is in another year's time.

Andy Johnson, CTO

Beyond supported living specific features, however, Executive Financial Director, Kat Angell, also appreciated how important it was for the success of the project to have a committed partner, rather than simply a vendor. 

Sometimes when you make a purchase for software, you find that once things are handed over from sales to the support or roll-out, you don't feel like such an important customer anymore.

We've not felt like that at all. If anything, we felt more valued I think because we've been able to work together to amend and change and improve what the product can offer. We felt like a really valued customer which has been a really good feeling. I think it helps with the service and the engagement and the communication.

Kat Angell, Executive Financial Director & Business Development