Converge manages its workforce needs through our dedicated Workforce Planning team, whose role is to balance supply and demand for all Converge service streams and modalities. This team is responsible for long- and short-term forecasting, gap analyses, strategic planning, key partnerships, and redundancy planning (among other tasks). This team carries in-house analytics capabilities, operations expertise and recruitment experience to ensure that our resourcing strategies are informed with the best data available, that theoretical solutions can be practically applied under real-world constraints, and that any challenges in the recruitment market can be meaningfully solved. 

This team adopts a dual-track approach to managing supply/demand, targeting medium-to-long-term workforce requirements for growth or service optimisations as well as constructing surge capacity redundancies to meet in-the-moment demand spikes. These goals are achieved through active monitoring of key metrics such as appointment wait times, service availability, and workforce movement on a national and region-by-region basis, and a focus on continuous learning and improvement. This informs the broader recruitment strategy and is used to design service optimisation strategies. 

Converge maintains a broad network of employed and contracted staff across the nation who form a multi-tiered service delivery model. Under this model, baseload demand is serviced by closely-engaged consultants who provide an ongoing and guaranteed volume of appointment availabilities. Surge capacity for both face-to-face and telehealth is provided by our extensive pool of contractors utilised on an as needed basis, and in times of crisis (such as major bushfire seasons or following extreme events) or extraordinary demand, further “crisis management” contingencies are put into place. Each layer of this model further extends our capacity for service delivery, affording us several levels of contingency options. 

Our extensive network of consultants nationally ensures that availability of suitably qualified staff is maintained during surge periods. Complementing this is our IT infrastructure which enables administrative functions (e.g. appointment scheduling) to be shared nationally when demand exceeds typical levels. Further, Converge’s Business Continuity Plan (BCP) ensures that operational performance will continue if circumstances prevent our normal operations. The BCP takes a risk management approach, identifying events that may impact on the ability of the organisation to maintain its operations. Under the BCP, we developed Mitigation Plans to ensure normal functioning of the organisation, covering:

• Staffing
• Infrastructure
• Data
• Core Systems
• Key Stakeholders.

The objectives of the BCP are to:

• Prioritise critical business functions 
• Detail our immediate response to a critical incident; and 
• Detail strategies to ensure the unimpeded operations of the organisation.

Converge undertakes risk audits on a regular basis across all facets of its governance, management and service delivery functions.