Case Study: Stearns County Sheriff's Office achieves improved staffing visibility and streamlined dispatch scheduling with Vector Solutions

Stearns Co. SO Dispatch Improves Staffing with Vector Scheduling

Stearns County's (MN) Sheriff's Office faced a complex Emergency Communications Center scheduling challenge: managing coverage for multiple police, fire and EMS agencies using manual Excel spreadsheets that only worked on work computers. To gain real-time staffing visibility and mobile access, Stearns County adopted Vector Solutions' web-based scheduling product, Vector Scheduling, to replace the server-based spreadsheets.

Vector Solutions implemented Vector Scheduling to handle regular schedules, overtime, special assignments and shift trades for more than two dozen full- and part-time telecommunicators, using Point-in-Time counts, shift-trade self-service, system logs and automated notifications. The result: streamlined, mobile-accessible scheduling by January 1, 2021; dispatchers can trade shifts and sign up for assignments from their phones, supervisors can verify historical activity and notifications, and staffing levels (e.g., minimums of three people 3–10 a.m. and four 10 a.m.–3 p.m.) are now clearly tracked and met.

Stearns County