Staffy is a digital staffing marketplace for healthcare in North America, leveraging technology to ensure quality patient care by filling every open shift and addressing the staffing challenges within North America’s healthcare system. This will allow healthcare professionals to better provide the care needed for their patients. We are dedicated to innovating at a pace that ensures healthcare organizations are technologically equipped to manage their workforce efficiently and effectively.
Tell us about yourself?
My background has been primarily in technology and security. I am also a food enthusiast and have a year’s worth of culinary training. Most of my career and professional experience has been in technical roles at companies like Scotiabank, Bell Media, Shaw Communications, and Bank of Montreal.
Combining my culinary interests and technological background, I initially created Staffy as a solution to absenteeism in the restaurant industry. However, when COVID-19 hit, the hospitality industry was severely impacted, causing many restaurants to shutter and leaving those in hospitality without work. With this in mind, I contacted clients to see where they needed staffing support. Long-term care homes that initially used Staffy to fill positions in their kitchen responded in need of staff to fill odd jobs and positions. Eventually, we received requests to fill positions like personal support workers (PSWs) and registered nurses (RNs).
When vaccine clinics rolled out, healthcare networks needed qualified professionals to run those clinics, and that’s where Staffy came in. After the rollout, Staffy turned its attention to the overburdened hospital system, staffing healthcare workers wherever they were needed.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
It is imperative to start with assembling a robust leadership team to ensure the smooth operations of your company. By appropriately distributing responsibilities and entrusting tasks to the most qualified individuals, you create the foundation for effective management.
A dynamic and cohesive leadership team not only enhances decision-making but also fosters a collaborative environment that drives the organization toward achieving its goals and surpassing expectations. Invest the time and effort in building a strong leadership team, and you will reap the rewards of a well-managed and successful business.
What problem does your business solve?
While COVID-19 exacerbated staffing issues and burnout within Canada’s healthcare industry, it didn’t create them. The Canadian healthcare system has long faced significant challenges, healthcare worker shortages, and burnout – a crisis that has been escalating since before the pandemic began. Healthcare professionals are often overworked past the point of exhaustion, ultimately impacting patient care.
In building Staffy as a workforce aggregation tool, we are connecting healthcare institutions to the qualified workforce they need to efficiently and effectively fill open positions. Our technology optimizes workflows and processes, eliminating manual tasks that can often be time-consuming and tedious. Ultimately, we hope to alleviate the stress faced by healthcare professionals and the institutions they serve, ensuring that patients across Canada have access to the care they deserve.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
I founded Staffy as a solution to absenteeism in the restaurant industry. With early experience in hospitality, I noticed that this industry was experiencing staffing issues even before the pandemic. My goal was to disrupt the traditional staffing model, ensuring that the hospitality industry could be staffed efficiently and workers paid fair wages – a win-win situation. We worked with event spaces, hotels, catering companies, and more.
When the pandemic hit, we pivoted into healthcare, not deterred from our mission. Whether it was for the hospitality or healthcare industry, our goal was and has always been to support workers and the institutions that need their talents and expertise. Today, Staffy is a workforce aggregation tool that empowers healthcare workers to work where they want, whenever they want. This grants them autonomy over their work schedules, allowing for better time management and greater care for their mental and physical well-being. Simultaneously, we enable healthcare facilities and institutions to manage their workforce more effectively.
What is your magic sauce?
What allows us to stand out is our proprietary software solutions and the ability to innovate quickly. Our ultimate goal is to make our solutions widely available to our clients so that healthcare organizations/providers can manage their workforce effectively. We are focused on expanding our tools to become a full-scale human resources information system (HRIS) for healthcare institutions across North America. Our upcoming credential management tool and scheduling platform is a great example of how we aim to make a difference in the healthcare industry.
This new tool aims to address current inefficiencies faced by professionals in the healthcare industry by simplifying tasks like verifying credentials, monitoring updates, maintaining compliance, managing access, and recording audits. These tasks are still often manual, and by automating them, Staffy enables healthcare providers to focus on the patients under their care.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
We are leveraging our internal developments to better serve our clients as we scale up. This forward-thinking and inventive approach has the potential to bring significant improvements to healthcare across Canada and North America. Our ultimate objective is to design a healthcare-focused HRIS (Human Resources Information System) that not only enhances efficiency but also caters specifically to industry needs, surpassing the capabilities of current solutions.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
COVID-19 has played a significant role in Staffy’s pivot. The challenges that came hand-in-hand with this included a 95 per cent drop in Staffy’s revenue. Despite this, I didn’t lay off any staff but challenged myself and my team to endure and succeed. I held firm in the belief that our determination, tenacity, and teamwork would see us through to brighter days.
How can people get involved?
You can check out our website www.staffy.com, download the Staffy App on the App Store or Google Play Store and follow us on LinkedIn (Staffy Inc.), X (@StaffyApp), Facebook (Staffy App), Instagram (StaffyApp) and Threads (StaffyApp).