Public vs Private AI

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There’s a lot coming out right now about AI and how it can help organizations, but most people don’t understand the different types of AI and why they should be focusing on one over the other.

Public AI is available to anyone with an internet connection. It is available to the public without restrictions, which is why it is becoming banned amongst organizations to avoid data theft.

Private AI is built for a specific audience and has restrictions to keep it confidential and secure. With Private AI sensitive data will not become part or a larger data set.

John Graham, MITC founder, CEO and Software Architect, recently spoke with OPEN MINDS about the difference in Public vs Private AI. Graham said, “It is the private piece that is so valuable to any medium to larger organization, especially ones with high employee turnover and significant training costs. Private AI enables an organization to support front line staff with work documentation, gifs, tags, images, and more. And by tracking what issues staff are struggling with, employers can improve training and onboarding.”

Graham says, “Software companies have, or will be, embedding AI in their software and in help desk technology. This will revolutionize the way caregivers receive information and support. Previously, companies could not support front line staff directly. With AI, we can. And AI allows employees to ask questions in any language. This will be a massive help to organizations who employ staff whose first language is not English. The bigger opportunity lies in organizations creating their own private AI to guide their caregivers with their own content. These would reflect the unique workflow of each health and human services organization and any “one off” programs or policies they might have aligned with local regulations.”

To learn more about AI, download the fact sheet.

MITC for Staff and Clients!

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MITC started as a telephone timekeeping company in 1990. Over the last 33 years, we have worked closely with thousands of human services providers, and understand the unique needs of agencies. We have grown our software and services to meet a wide range of needs for providers.

In 2017, we rebranded to Agency Workforce Management by MITC. Agency Workforce Management was created to encapsulate what we offered to agency staff. From time and attendance and scheduling, to billing and EVV, Agency Workforce Management represented our agency-focused solutions.

Now in 2023, we have outgrown Agency Workforce Management. As we continue to work with agencies across the globe, we have expanded our solutions to include a range of client-based solutions as well as staff-based solutions! 

Client scheduling, documentation, billing, and EHR have all been added to our suite of solutions within the past five years.

We are excited to announce that Agency Workforce Management has become MITC, Staff and Client Solutions. Same company, same people, just with more to offer!

We would like to thank all the agencies who have helped us learn about the challenges agencies face, and provided software feedback, suggestions, and worked with us closely so that we could develop these products to align with agency needs.

Click here to learn more about our CLIENT SOLUTIONS.

Click here to learn about our STAFF SOLUTIONS.

The 2022 MITC DSP Winner

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MITC has awarded a total of $5,000 to Direct Support Professionals (DSPs) who stand out and go above and beyond to provide exemplary service.

MITC values the hard work put forth by DSPs everyday, and is hoping to show our appreciation through these prizes!

After receiving 500+ nominations from hundreds of agencies, the 2022 winners of the MITC DSP Awards was chosen. After reading through his incredible story, William Jackson was chosen as the $1,000 grand prize winner.

William has been a full time employee at TARC working almost 80 hours a week for 5 years now. He has been primarily working with one main individual but has been cross trained and filled in for at least 8 other clients with disabilities. William has near perfect attendance for 5 years, never calls out, and is always engaged with his clients. William has stood up for his clients and defended them when people made ugly remarks and put himself in harms way to protect them.

William has donated his free time, his vehicle, his handy work and his personal items to clients. He has given clients in need clothes, fixed holes in a wall for a client that couldn’t afford repairs, helped moved clients that couldn’t afford movers and used his own time and gas money, has driven/ridden 4-5 hours to get behavior clients out of the hospital so that they could return home, never disrespects office staff or co-workers, always completes all required paperwork. William is always engaged with his client when on outings. He makes sure that everyone is having a great time when on group trips and assists everyone, not just the person he is working with. 

They do not make individuals like William anymore. He is not here for a paycheck, he is here because he cares! That is a hard quality to find these days. William is an ex-police officer, who stepped down to really make a difference in the life of someone who needed him. He is always defending his client and even gives up his seat for his client to be able to sit down. He treats his clients like equals and always finds something enjoyable for them to do together. He betters the lives of each individual he works with. He has helped many clients with self esteem issues step out of their shells and became vibrant interactive individuals. He allows his individuals to aide in helping them cooking , etc. and has given them the credit for it when people compliment them. William truly gives his individuals a shoulder to lean on and listens to each of their problems with empathy. He put his own life on hold to secure the safety, well being and happiness of his clients.

From all of us here at MITC, thank you to all DSPs who go above an beyond every day. Your stories and dedication to the individuals you serve is inspiring!

To learn more about all of our 2022 winners, download the ebook!

3 Providers Win $600 for Best myMITC Landing Page

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We know employees must go to the landing page to clock-in/out, complete documentation, access Client Profiles, request PTO, check schedules and more. Your landing page should be updated regularly to communicate your message to your employees. Engaged employees are better employees!

MITC has awarded $600.00 in prizes to the customers with the best designed myMITC landing page. The plan is to help other providers improve communication with their staff.

Check out the winning landing pages below for some inspiration on how your agency can use the landing page to engage your employees!

Working From Home Might Never End

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It’s now been more than two years since many workers were sent home, and while the pandemic is easing, some just aren’t coming back to the office. This blog looks at what this means for hiring and retention as many employees regard working from home as worth anything from a 5-10% pay raise!

In a new report, HSBC economist James Pomeroy noted office attendance rates are struggling to get back above 40% to 50% of where they were before the coronavirus hit. Data from Kastle Systems for the U.S. shows the current highest rate of office occupancy is Austin, Texas, and that’s still only 53%. The lowest is San Francisco at around 30%.

And it’s not just the US. As of February, Transport for London data recorded only 70% of 2019’s journey volumes, suggesting commuting is still down.

Employer HR now faces a new competitive issue when it comes to hiring and retention. What is your working from home or hybrid working policy going to be? How will it impact organizational effectiveness? How will it help attract new talent and retain existing talent? This could be “forever”.

That’s all despite restaurants, cinemas and flights seeing as much as 90% of the 2019 volumes, which implies people are confident going out — just not to the office.

“With offices only half full in most of the developed world, many will be expecting office occupancy to grind higher,” said Pomeroy. “However, it’s worth keeping in mind the alternative: that occupancy could already be close to a peak.” This could be forever.

The trend is evident in other data. WFH Research reported earlier this month that according to its survey of more than 32,000 people in 25 economies, the average worker values a day from home as much as a 5% pay rise.

Serbians associate flexibility with 10% more pay, while Americans reckon it’s worth a 6% hike.  

Furthermore, 15% would seek out a new job if their current employer forced them back to the office five days a week. The numbers are higher in the U.K., Australia and Canada.

This is not surprising. Employees faced with the prospect of going into New York City regularly sited additional costs of up to $10,000 a year in travel costs (Vehicle depreciation, mileage, public transportation, lunch, additional dry cleaning, etc.) plus lost personal time.

An employee driving 20 miles a day to work is spending 10,000 miles, or around $5,000 a year, in after-tax income just to get to work and back.

There’s also a gap between the hopes of workers and employers. WFH Research’s survey indicates employee’s desire about two working days at home each week. Bosses are generally planning offering just one even though the same study suggests staff are 4% more efficient when at home versus business premises.

Pomeroy sees various economic implications from the latest data:

  • Businesses will need to compete in different ways to attract talent, be it by offering a hybrid experience or more flexible hours.
  • Rent and house prices are now being driven by demand for suburban and rural properties rather than homes in city centers. Many employees have, or want to, relocate to lower cost areas.

What does this mean for hiring and retention?

  1. If you have positions that could be done from home, or are being done from home, make sure the working from home option is a big part of your job postings.
  2. If retention is a concern, develop a hybrid working plan so existing employees can take advantage of working from home if they want to.
  3. Working from home is not for everyone or every organization. Make sure your hybrid working plan addresses the needs of all types of employees, including those who enjoy coming into the office.
  4. Establish clear rules for working from home and regular remote meetings. Consider mandatory video calls.
  5. Employees still want to socialize with colleagues. Consider taking savings in rent from the reduction in leases/square footage. Use that money to fund team building events.
  6. Consider paying employees who work from home a non-taxable stipend for using their mobile phone.
  7. Some companies allow extra flexibility for employees with young children to manage disrupted day care and school schedules.

Using PTO Cash Outs to Help with the Holiday Season

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The labor shortage, particularly for agencies managing group homes, shows no sign of abating. These are new and old remedies providers are using to fill and cover visits.

  • Allow staff to cash out their PTO and work extra shifts. This doesn’t cost anymore real money and helps provide extra hours of coverage. Many DSP’s welcome the extra money.
  • Encourage all qualified staff to apply for extra hours through your scheduling system. This helps share the overtime around, and may even reduce overtime if part time workers request the hours.
  • Communicate open shift opportunities to all staff automatically.
  • Pay staff 150% or 200% uplift when they work a holiday. Replace guaranteed holidays with extra PTO that has to be requested like other PTO days. This helps fill difficult to fill shifts.
  • Include overtime and holiday pay uplift in job postings. Amazon and Walmart don’t pay out much (if any) overtime, especially to new staff.
  • Create a DSP transition training program to encourage people from other industries who have been displaced, or are still at home, to see how they could quickly become a DSP.
  • Use pay differentials for difficult to fill shifts and visits. This avoids a long term commitment to base pay if and when extra funding is reduced or the labor market returns to normal.

The 2021 MITC DSP Winner

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MITC has awarded a total of $5,000 to Direct Support Professionals (DSPs) who stand out and go above and beyond to provide exemplary service during the current emergency.

MITC values the hard work put forth by DSPs everyday, and is hoping to show our appreciation through these prizes!

After receiving 684 nominations from hundreds of agencies, the 2021 winners of the MITC DSP Awards was chosen. After reading through his incredible story, Matthew Green was chosen as the $1,000 grand prize winner.

Matthew is a DSP at Aspire Living & Learning, a private, non-profit human service and educational organization, serving individuals in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Maryland. 

Matt Green is not your usual DSP. In fact, he’s a behavior analyst who usually is supporting DSPs to help individuals learn new communication and social skills to replace behaviors that aren’t serving them well.  All that changed during the pandemic when one of our most challenging individuals was about to become homeless. 

Aspire was arranging for 24-hour emergency staffing, when Matt stepped forward and said he would be willing to move in with him for a couple of months if they provided some relief staffing and continued the 2:1 day supports. The individual didn’t have a home, and Matt’s home was not suitable. Matt then leased a home on his own and changed his legal address. They moved in together and began a two-month journey that had a great ending.

Because the pandemic was raging, Matt increased his personal risk substantially by choosing to live in a staffed situation where multiple people were coming and going. He could have chosen to continue working remotely as a behavior analyst, had he wanted to.

While Matt was relieved of his other responsibilities, he continued to touch base with others in difficulty and remained an active team member. He went well beyond anything Aspire would have asked him to do.

Because of Matt’s tireless work, Aspire’s understanding of the individual’s needs increased substantially. 

Matt is truly committed to the success of each person he supports, even when that requires great personal sacrifice on his part.  He does so with a consistent positive attitude. He goes the extra mile, the extra 1000 miles really!

Walmart Guilty of ADA Violation

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A jury found Walmart violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) when they fired a longtime employee with Down syndrome in Wisconsin after implementing a new computerized scheduling system, CNBC reported.

Aggressive scheduling systems used by major retailers are notorious. Some jurisdictions have passed laws to protect employees from anti-social schedules such as being asked to work two short split shifts in one day or schedules that don’t allow staff sufficient time to sleep and rest.

The U.S. Equal Employment Commission wants the judge to put the nation’s largest private employer on notice. In a motion, the federal agency said Walmart should be under tighter oversight for the next five years and required to make clear, in company policies that employees with disabilities are entitled to reasonable accommodations. Plus, the EEOC said, Walmart should be forced to post a sign about the lawsuit and its actions at more than 100 stores.

A draft of the memo, which the EEOC made and shared with the judge, lays out why the company was wrong to fire Marlo Spaeth, a longtime employee, and uses it as a cautionary tale about the consequences of violating the ADA.

The federal agency is asking for the memo to be posted for five years in the region where Walmart violated the ADA. A judge will ultimately decide whether or not to grant the measures.

Walmart is reviewing the filing, company spokesman Randy Hargrove said. In a previous statement, he said Walmart’s leaders and managers “take supporting all our associates seriously and for those with disabilities, we routinely accommodate thousands every year.”

Spaeth, who has Down syndrome, worked for nearly 16 years as a sales associate at a Walmart Supercenter in Manitowoc, in eastern Wisconsin. She was fired from her job after the store began using a new computerized scheduling system, which changed her hours. Managers refused to reinstate Spaeth’s longtime work schedule.

In July, Walmart lost the lawsuit, and was ordered by the jury to pay a more than $125 million verdict — one of the highest in the federal agency’s history for a single victim. The damages were reduced by the judge to $300,000, the maximum allowed under the law.

In the motion, the EEOC said Walmart should pay nearly $187,000 on top of those damages to make up for Spaeth’s years of lost wages. It asked the judge to require Walmart to reinstate Spaeth as an employee or pay the equivalent of ten years of wages in lieu of reinstatement.

The federal agency also called for the strictest oversight of Walmart — and the posted signs — in the region where Spaeth’s store is located. 

In that region, it said Walmart should require ADA training for all managers and supervisors and incorporate adherence to those policies into annual performance reviews. It also said Walmart should be forced to notify the EEOC within 90 days about any request for accommodation of an employee’s disability and to share details about that request, including the person’s name and contact information — as well as how Walmart responded.

Not Vaccinated? Your Health Insurance Costs $200 More a Month

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Delta Air Lines is raising health insurance premiums for unvaccinated employees by $200 a month to cover higher Covid costs.

Starting November 1, unvaccinated Delta employees who have health insurance from the company will face $200 monthly surcharges. Starting September 12, unvaccinated employees will have to take a Covid test every week, while “community case rates” are high, and wear masks effective September 12.

According to a Delta employee memo: “The average hospital stay for COVID-19 has cost Delta $50,000 per person. This surcharge will be necessary to address the financial risk the decision to not vaccinate is creating for our company. In recent weeks, since the rise of the B.1.617.2 variant, all Delta employees who have been hospitalized with COVID were not fully vaccinated.”

Delta also said starting September 30, “in compliance with state and local laws, COVID pay protection will only be provided to fully vaccinated individuals who are experiencing a breakthrough infection.” Unvaccinated employees who contract Covid, without exemptions, will have to use their sick days.

Delta CEO Bastian said that about 75% of Delta’s roughly 75,000 employees are already vaccinated and that “aggressiveness of the [delta] variant means we need to get many more of our people vaccinated, and as close to 100 percent as possible.

Delta earlier this year started requiring new employees to be vaccinated against Covid. United Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines say they will mandate vaccines for employees.

Vaccination Mandate Announced

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The U.S. government has announced a broad plan to increase Covid-19 vaccination rates in the U.S. as cases plateau at a high number, pressuring private employers to immunize their workforce, as well as mandating the shots for federal workers, contractors and employees of health-care facilities that receive Medicare or Medicaid funding.

  • The USA is reporting an average of 151,500 new cases per day, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, hovering around levels seen in late January. The USA is also reporting an average of about 1,500 Covid deaths per day, according to Hopkins’ data, in line with numbers seen in March when the U.S. was coming down from its winter surge.

The plan is intended to get more people vaccinated, allow schools to reopen safely, increase testing, improve care for patients and boost the economic recovery.

  1. Federal employees will be required to get a Covid vaccine, with no option for regular testing.
  2. The executive order will extend to contractors that work with the U.S. government, impacting a total of 2.1 million employees. Previously, all federal employees to get vaccinated or submit to a series of rigorous safety protocols.
  3. The Department of Labor will issue a rule that requires employers with more than 100 employees to mandate vaccines or testing, according to officials.
  4. Health-care facilities that get Medicare and Medicaid funding to have staff fully vaccinated.

Overall, the new vaccination requirements will cover about 100 million employees, affecting two-thirds of U.S. workers.

  1. As part of the multi-pronged plan to combat Covid, the US is increasing the average weekly pace of shipments of free monoclonal antibody treatments for Covid by 50%. More than 800,000 doses were shipped in July and August.
  2. The Transportation Security Administration is also doubling fines for travelers who refuse to follow a federal mask mandate for air travel. Fines will soon start at $500 and go up to $3,000 for repeat offenders.
  3. The USA additionally plans to call on all schools to set up regular testing when Covid is spreading in a community for students, faculty and staff who aren’t fully vaccinated, according to an administration official.
  4. The Department of Education will make additional funding available to help local school districts backfill salaries and other funding where it has been withheld by state leaders for implementing Covid safety measures.
  5. $2 billion will be put towards the production of 280 million rapid and at-home Covid tests using the Defense Production Act. The plan expands the USA’s free Covid testing program to 10,000 pharmacies nationwide and provides community health centers and foodbanks with 25 million free rapid tests to distribute.
  6. Private businesses will also distribute discounted tests: Walmart, Amazon, and Kroger will start selling at-home Covid tests “at their costs for the next three months”. The discount will reportedly make the tests 35% cheaper for consumers.

Only just over 176 million Americans, or 53.3% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, according to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.