Deadlines in Compassly
The problem
An effective system of monitoring and overseeing competencies isn’t just about keeping track of who has what competencies. It’s also critical to know which competencies and which team members are on schedule, and which are running late.
This serves an immediate purpose – ensuring that all competencies are being completed in a timely manner supports delivering the best possible care to patients. But it also has a less obvious (but just as important) role to play – it helps highlight where staff development may be slipping behind. This is an immediate operational challenge, but also suggests areas where staff may become demoralised, disengaged and are ultimately at risk of leaving.
If tracking completion of competencies is difficult on paper, tracking competency due dates and any late-running is nearly impossible.
The solution in Compassly
Compassly allows competency authors to set an expected completion duration for each competency. Simple competencies might only need a couple of weeks, whereas the most complicated might need six months or more.
Then when a competency is assigned to an individual, a due date is automatically assigned by Compassly using that target duration. An optional “Due soon” warning can also be set, any number of days before the competency is due.
Example:
I’m assigned a simple hand washing competency on 1st September – it has a target duration of 21 days and a warning of 7 days before the deadline. If not already completed, it will show as “Due soon” from the 16th of September, and late from the 23rd of September.
In all cases we work on the basis of whole days up to midnight to avoid any confusion on dates – so irrespective of when on the 1st you started, 21 days gets you to the end of the 22nd, and it’s late from midnight on the 23rd.
Simple and clear in the app
For an individual
If you look down the list of you or your supervisee’s competencies, you’ll see an icon against any that are either “Due soon”:
Or already “Late”:
Tapping into that competency will explain exactly how that deadline works, including:
- When the competency was assigned
- The duration of the target
- The due date
- As of today, how many days until (due soon) or past (late) the target
This makes all deadlines in Compassly crystal clear and fair to everyone.
The due date serves as a guide to support development – there is no change to the competency or action required for a late competency, and nobody is locked out of progressing it.
Focussing on due soon or late competencies
When looking at a user’s competencies (your own or a supervisee’s), if you want to focus on just those competencies that are late or due soon then you can tap the icon at the top of the list of competencies to filter:
Reporting
Wherever you see a list of users (for example in the reporting Dashboard or in your list of Supervisees), you can also filter by those who have competencies due soon or already late.
Tap on the icons at the top of the list of users and that list will be filtered for just people who have competencies with that status – due soon or late. The numbers next to the filter icons show you the total number of competencies of that status, and against each filtered user you can also see the number they have.
And you can do this for individual competencies too. Just tap on the competency status bar and select the competency you want to look at, and the same filters will show, but for just that competency.
A single view – new and renew
To make all of this simpler to understand, we’ve simplified and combined the “soon” and “late” indicators so that they apply to both:
- Completing new competencies
- Renewing expiring competencies
Both have the same logic – a due date, and a reminder date – but the app will also show you the details of what needs to be done, completion or renewal.
You can find out more about renewing competencies in our page about expiry. And if you want to just focus on those that have expired, you can still see competencies that have already expired as a separate, red expired status.
Configuration for competency authors
It’s very easy to configure these dates for competencies – simply set the target duration (in days) against the competency.
You can also optionally configure when you want the “due soon” warning to appear. This is set on a competency-by-competency basis, so you can choose the right warning point for that specific competency. A one month warning might work well for a competency with a six month completion target, but that’s not so helpful if the completion target itself is a month.
Coming soon – email reminders and alerts
To help people hit more of the deadlines on time, we will also be introducing two complimentary features:
- A weekly summary email to supervisors, highlighting any deadlines coming up for their supervisees plus any that have competencies that are already late
- A specific alerts to individuals, warning them when they have competencies coming due soon or that have turned late
Both features should help everyone focus less on chasing late competencies and more on the actual completion of competencies.
