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Telestaff-Computer aided staffing

I am currently evaluating the Telestaff program for departmental staffing and I would like to know what your experience has been with this program. Did you have any unexpected costs and upgrades, unforseen revisions to your staffing policies, and any other pitfalls to deal with.

If you have favorable results with another staffing program please let me know.

My goal would be to utilize this program for our daily staffing needs, special events that utilize off-duty personnel, e.g. sporting event standbys, emergency callback, and overtime staffing.

We currently utilize the Firehouse program for our incident reports and staffing roster. I would also like to know if you are utilizing an interface for AS400 so Telestaff can transfer this data for personnnel hours for payroll purposes. If you do what company are utilizing for your interface and how is that working out for you.

Your feedback is greatly appreciated,

Jim Saladin (Sal)

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Permalink Reply by Greg Sellers on July 31, 2008 at 9:50am

We use telestaff in our department, it works well with organizing staffing for companies, placing personnel to fill vacancies and keeping track of who is on annual leave, sick leave etc. We will shortly start keeping track of all sick and annual leave balances through telestaff. I believe you can set the system up exactly how you like it.

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Permalink Reply by Bobby Halton on August 2, 2008 at 1:32pm

Jim
I used Telestaff in Albuquerque and we were very happy with it although we were the first 48/96 they ever worked with. I would contact Deputy Chief Kevin Pierce in Albuquerque for an update. But I thought it was an excellent service and worked well.
Bobby

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Permalink Reply by Jim Saladin on August 5, 2008 at 8:26am

Thank you for the feedback to this post and the 48-96 schedule. I am surprised at the amount of firefighters that enjoy the 48 hour shift duration. When I got off this morning i was pretty tired from the calls last night and tried to place myself in the mindset to go another 24 hours, took some "coaching" but it could be done.

Thanks again,
Jim Saladin
(Sal)

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Permalink Reply by Jim Saladin on August 5, 2008 at 8:30am

Could you provide me with a contact person within your department that worked on the implementation of this program.

Thank you,
Jim Saladin
(Sal)

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Permalink Reply by Greg cousler on August 17, 2008 at 12:33am

My department uses Telestaff. I am not a shift commander or acting shift commander so I have not been trained on how to set it up or manipulate the software. We use it for staffing and to create a payroll report. It also tracks all employee's O/T. I feel that we underutilize Telestaff’s full capabilities. Our administrators maintain a hands on approach to much of the program. For example if someone enters sick leave the system can automatically start making calls to fill in the vacancy. However in some cases the program is not permitted to function automatically. If you are an administrator you may appreciate this flexibility. As a line officer I would appreciate if the system was left to function in automatic mode more often.

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