Top 35 Operational Workflows Digitized
by UK Schools in Operoo
Across the UK, Operoo’s School Operations Platform is being used to automate parent, staff and student processes, digitally managing over 200 operational workflows in K – 12 schools and MATs.
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Below are the top 35 paper and people reliant workflows we’ve helped automate, empowering you to stop wasting resources on operational inefficiencies and, instead, focus every minute and every pound possible on student education:
1. Digitally collecting and verifying student health information
Fulfilling your duty-of-care obligations are paramount to ensure the safe day-to-day functioning of your school. That’s why efficiently and accurately collecting and verifying the latest health and medical information for students is critical — from medical conditions and dietary information, to emergency contacts and Healthcare Plans for identified illnesses (asthma, anaphylaxis, etc).
With Operoo, schools have all the latest health information at their fingertips — anywhere, anytime, on any device.
Parents complete a digital medical form once, quickly update it whenever information changes, with staff able to immediately access that updated data on any device or platform. Authorized staff are also immediately alerted when changes are made, so you’re never caught off-guard.
The Wasted Millions on Traditional UK School Pre-Admissions
Allerton High School Results Summary
2. Pre-admissions and induction
Traditional, resource-intensive pre-admissions take hours to complete, thousands of recurring administrative tasks, and sheet after sheet of paper — which all costs money. Estimates indicate that the average UK school spends over £7,200 each year on the administrative costs associated with processing just the paper-based elements of pre-admissions applications. And, that’s just the tip of a very expensive iceberg.
Then, there’s the time and expense of chasing parents for information, communicating with pre-admitted families, manual data entry, induction for new and returning students, and more.
Discover how Allerton High School digitally transformed the way it manages pre-admissions, streamlining the entire process, automatically inducting new students once admitted, and instantly syncing data back into its Management Information System, SIMS. To see how Allerton has saved thousands of pounds and hundreds of hours of heartache, access the webinar and case study HERE >
3. School trip management
Organising and supervising safe and successful school trips is a lot of work at the best of times; let alone in COVID times. So forget repetitive, manual processes that take too much time and create barriers to safeguarding your students.
Discover how schools across the UK, just like yours, are preparing, managing and running school trips digitally – without the complications of paper forms and unnecessary face-to-face interactions.
Take all your processes online and automate the entire trip management lifecycle: From internal sign-offs, distributing and collecting permission forms, and managing medical records and payments; to identifying and safeguarding vulnerable cohorts, responding to emergencies and recording incidents, communicating with parents, and securing confidential student data once an activity has finished.
Discover how Felpham College took its school trip management process from a resource-intensive paperwork calamity, to a seamless digital experience, giving staff their time back, enhancing parent engagement, student participation, data security and the school’s ability to efficiently meet its duty-of-care obligations 24/7.
Download case study HERE >
Watch webinar HERE >
Felpham College Results Summary
End-to-end Digital Trip Management
4. Collecting consents and signatures
Are you sick of students leaving permission slips crumpled at the bottom of school bags? Then cut out the middle man. Discover how your fellow schools are embracing eForms to digitally distribute, collect and automate consents.
Drive higher and faster response rates for all permission requests by digitally delivering signable eForms straight to your parents’ mobile phones: From media consent and COVID testing, to school policy agreements, extracurricular activity participation permission and more.
5. Request management
Requests are always being made of your school; from both staff and families. With Operoo, not only can you digitize these application processes, automated workflows ensure approvals can be managed seamlessly too. Easily replace your manual, multi-app or paper-based process.
On the staff side, room reservations, supply purchases, reimbursements, sick leave, building maintenance, IT support and time off for CPD are just some of the routine requests to be managed.
Find out how Bishopsgate has automated over 80 staff workflows in Operoo:
6. COVID-safe processes
Throughout the last 18 months, schools across the UK have been tasked with the challenge of operating amidst the ‘new normal’ of COVID-19. But, balancing these needs should not detract from the core mission: Educating young people.
Discover how schools and MATS are using Operoo’s Health Checks and Recurring eForms in order to implement the systemised processes needed to both keep school communities safe and address the educational needs of its students.
Automate COVID-safe protocols including daily health screenings, case tracking reporting, as well as lateral flow testing consents and scheduling in seamless digital, mobile-ready workflows. Then, discover how to set-up Trigger Actions to instantly distribute date-stamped campus passes for teachers and students (see image) as well as follow-up communications and instructions in the event of positive test results.
For more, check out these resources:
7. Flexible ‘Bubble Scheduling’ and Key Worker register management
Aside from keeping staff and students safe, while quickly communicating updates to families, COVID-19 has forced schools to continually juggle onsite and remote resources and learning schedules between different ‘bubbles’.
With Operoo Smart Groups, UK schools can automatically segment staff and students into different cohorts to dynamically match changing COVID-ready bubble schedules in real-time. Then, set-up automatic reminders to notify parents, students and staff about the days and times they’re required to report to school. Be confident that the right people are in the right buildings on the right days, while ensuring pupils remain engaged with modified learning programs.
Compliance, HR and Information Manager at Bishopsgate School, Sarah Allmond:
“Operoo’s Smart Groups make it far faster to deliver targeted communications and specific forms to certain types of recipients. I can easily slice and dice staff or pupils into segments based on data within their profiles, eForm responses or Tags. Because Smart Groups are dynamic, staff and students are automatically placed into these segments the moment they match the specified criteria.
“When the COVID threat became clear, we needed to establish a number of COVID-safe and COVID reporting processes. For example, we needed to identify the students who had parents or carers employed as key workers in order to provision onsite staffing.
“Initially, our Deputy Head emailed the parents of our students, asking them to complete a Google Form. He wasn’t aware that Operoo could help here too. I quickly showed him the profound difference between what Google Forms offered and what we could achieve in Operoo. With Operoo, we could automate everything: The Register of Key Workers would update itself, we’d know which students were coming in and when each day. That same day, I set-up and sent out an Operoo eForm to manage the whole process.”
For more, check out the Bishopsgate School webinar and case study HERE >
8. Extracurricular activity management
School extracurricular activities — from tutoring programs, to sports competitions and performing arts — require strong parental engagement and student participation to be sustainable and successful. But, awkward, time-consuming and manual sign-up processes often get in the way.
That’s why schools across the UK are streamlining the associated registration, payments, consent and medical data verification processes in integrated digital workflows with Operoo.
9. IT help desk request management
In the era of modern schooling, where every staff member and student has a device, supporting that large user base — and tracking requests for help — requires significant recurring effort.
With Operoo, effortlessly set-up an end-to-end digital workflow to ensure nothing falls through the cracks — from logging, categorizing, resolving and communicating progress of support tickets submitted by parents, students and staff alike. Easily route support tickets to appropriate staff, while tracking each one being approved and managed.
10. Loan device registration and tracking
With staff and students working from home more than ever before, and broad-scale device loan schemes in action across many schools, you need a robust mechanism for managing that processes online — from start to finish.
During remote learning, schools across the UK have used Operoo to set-up inventory management workflows to facilitate, register and track the use of school equipment — such as laptops — off-site.
11. Absenteeism reporting and tracking
Schools are full of recurring tasks and processes. Wherever possible, these workflows should be automated to ensure time and resources can be expended on more important pursuits. A prominent example is the reporting and tracking of student absenteeism.
Digitise your absenteeism submission process, and automate the subsequent tasks that need to take place — from notifying classroom teachers and the school nurse, to confirming the absence with the child’s parents and recording it against the student profile in your administrative system(s).
For example, Bishopsgate School automates its COVID processes, including a 28-point COVID-safe workflow (pictured). The workflow contains four programmatic chains of responses — and 28 individual trigger actions — which are instantly triggered depending on the different ways COVID symptoms are reported upon submission of its Pupil Absence Notification Form.
For details, GO HERE >
Built in Operoo, the above workflow contains four programmatic chains of responses — and 28 individual trigger actions — depending on the different ways in which COVID symptoms were reported in Bishopsgate’s initial absenteeism form.
12. Student roll calls / registers
Knowing where your students are at all times is critical — from tracking classes attendance during on-campus or remote learning, to participation in school excursions, events and extracurricular activities.
Digitising student roll call / registers, and making them mobile accessible means that you can complete them whenever and wherever required without leaving an awkward papertrail.
Not only does digitising the process allow you to do-away-with the associated manual data entry, roll calls submitted by staff in the field are instantly available for viewing at school.
13. Staff appraisals
Staff HR and administrative processes can be a slog. And, staff appraisals are often public enemy number one. Everybody is short-for-time and usually has higher priorities: namely supporting students and families.
Taking the process online — and automating each step in a digital workflow, including time-based reminders — ensures everybody is held accountable to deadlines, removes the need to manually chase non-respondents, and improves completion timeframes.
Compliance, HR and Information Manager at Bishopsgate School, Sarah Allmond:
“About 18 months prior to Operoo, we relaunched the format of our staff appraisals. Unfortunately, we had poor uptake and engagement. So, I move it all onto Operoo along with our other staff processes.
“Our last appraisal was conducted at the half-term just gone. Thanks to Operoo, its Trigger Actions and Automated Reminders, we completed it all on-time with no manual chasing. It’s been transformative!”
For details, view the Bishopsgate School webinar and case study HERE >
14. Daily Announcement, Text Messaging and news distribution
Effortlessly ensure parents are informed and engaged with SMS, push notifications and email communications, which are accessible anywhere and anytime via the Operoo Mobile App.
Digitally distribute Daily Announcements directly to intended recipients (in over 100 languages), as well as newsletters, memos, policy updates, meeting or consent requests and more.
Even distribute real-time updates to any group in Operoo, received in each recipient’s preferred language, with Operoo News. And, push notifications in the new Operoo Mobile App instantly alert parents to news as it happens.
To find out more about Operoo News, GO HERE >
15. Parent – Teacher Conference Management and Appointment Scheduling
Coordinating parent – teacher interviews is a logistical nightmare; even when we’re not grappling with a pandemic. Leave the chaos behind.
Digitally deliver conference booking forms straight to parents’ cell phones, track scheduled appointments in real-time, and automatically notify teachers as soon as an appointment is logged.
Scheduling other types of meetings for things like guidance or careers counseling — and issuing subsequent reminders — also shouldn’t have to involve any of the three Ps: People, paper and phone calls.
16. Event registration and ticketing
Schools run lots of events to raise money, complete enhancement works, showcase student talent and share information about the school itself: From working bees and fetes, to school productions and information evenings for prospective families.
Many of these events require registration and ticketing processes, while also being open to members of the community not captured within the school management information system.
With Operoo, you can easily create digital sign-up forms, post them on your school website to make them accessible to any interested parties, while also embedding ordering / ticket reservation and digital payment fields. Then, store all submissions centrally for easy tracking and reporting.
17. Before and after school club management
Before and after school programs provide an integral service for busy working parents.
Automate the registration process, dynamically update the group of participating students, instantly distribute communications to the specific families and give third-party providers access to relevant student profiles – including medical, dietary and emergency contact information.
Compliance, HR and Information Manager at Bishopsgate School, Sarah Allmond:
“Our Operoo journey first began because of our desire to streamline our school trip management process,” said Allmond. “Before COVID took over, we saw how Operoo transformed the management of extra-curricular activities; particularly our after school club.
“Parents loved how easy it was to make bookings through Operoo’s digital forms, while we had internal visibility into the number of sign-ups per day, age group and activity type. The live updates of data saved us a monumental amount of time.
“And, we know that the digital Roll Calls, Incident Management and mobile accessibility will hold us in good stead when excursions resume. External providers, working with our after school club, have already told us how easy it is to use.”
For more, check out the Bishopsgate School webinar and case study HERE >
18. Contactless Visitor Check-Ins
Knowing who’s in your school buildings, and doing that in a contact-free manner, has never been more important. When visitors enter the building and need a form, point them to your QR code wall. Opening their camera, or a QR code reader, users can scan Operoo generated QR codes and automatically open forms on their mobile devices.
Together, Operoo Public eForms and QR Code recognition capabilities enable you to facilitate contact-free submission for any form type, from anybody – not just school staff and registered parents.
For more, WATCH THIS 3-MINUTE VIDEO >
19. School survey distribution and collection
Schools need to consistently and continuously collect information from its constituents – parents, students and staff. But, in order to conduct surveys regularly, and accurately collect and act on sufficient sample sizes, the process for distributing, collecting, tracking and analyzing results needs to be automated.
For example, schools across the UK used Operoo to digitally disseminate secure online surveys to better-understand the technology needs of their families during remote learning.
20. Special Education Needs identification
Having a robust process for identifying and managing SENCO processes – to ensure you’re able to efficiently and effectively enable your staff to provide students and families with the support services required – is critical.
To meet this need, Leeds’ Allerton High School incorporated an automated workflow within its start-of-year student induction.
Allerton High School’s Data Manager and Educational Visits Coordinator, Gary Loughrey:
“Once we’ve established the specific needs or interests of incoming students, placed them in appropriate digital buckets with Smart Groups, and obtained supplementary information, Operoo Trigger Actions help us automate the next steps too.
“When pre-admitted families fill out our disability questionnaire and indicate that their child requires extra support, we use Trigger Actions to instantly send an email notifying our SENCO [Special Education Needs Coordinator]. That communication pinpoints the specific child, family and recommends follow-up actions. In this case, the automated email suggests the SENCO should set-up a meeting to determine how the school can best assist the incoming student.”
To hear more about how Allerton High School is using Operoo, access the webinar and case study HERE >
21. Staff Compliance, HR, Payroll and Policy Management
Managing staff, along with their entitlements and obligations, places significant recurring administrative demand on schools. From acknowledging and complying with new school guidelines, to Unused Sick Time Transfers, and submitting Teacher Self Reflection Surveys.
Automating all your HR and payroll forms and associated workflows in Operoo means your school can put its administrative resources to better use.
Operoo also empowers you to automate the creation, distribution and collection of all new policies in one place. Easily track responses, and include an acknowledgement button or mandatory signature field, to ensure compliance with any policy update. Even set automated follow-ups and reminders to receive higher completion rates in less time.
Compliance, HR and Information Manager at Bishopsgate School, Sarah Allmond:
“Operoo has allowed us to consolidate, digitise and automate all our staff processes in one place. Not only has this significantly reduced the effort required to achieve significantly superior response rates, it’s also been invaluable for keeping staff connected and accountable during remote learning and throughout the pandemic to date.”
Today, Bishopsgate uses Operoo for a broad range of staff processes, including all event management, risk assessments, bookings, signing-off on policies and procedures, staff requests, and lateral flow testing.
For more, check out the Bishopsgate School webinar and case study HERE >
22. CPD management
The management and delivery of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) varies significantly from school to school.
But, no matter the specific school, two things remain the same: CPD opportunities form a significant part of ongoing staff training and need to be carefully managed to ensure benchmarks are adhered to – from meeting the number CPD hours allocated to each type of staff member, and ensuring the right opportunities are offered to address skill gaps within the staffing cohort; to managing timetables to account for absences, organising replacement staff, and ensuring personnel budgets aren’t breached.
With Operoo, you can automate the whole CPD process – from lodging requests, conducting internal approvals, notifying administrative staff of coverage requirements for approved CPD absences, to tracking CPD programs against goals and allocated budgets.
23. New personnel onboarding
Compared to many other organisations, schools have a large and highly varied workforce, while also operating amidst relatively high staff turnover.
As a result, significant resources are spent onboarding or inducting new staff members. But, because it’s inward-facing, this recurring process often remains inefficient.
Instead of relying on individuals to manually introduce new personnel to procedures, systems, and people, automate the entire onboarding process in one digital workflow with Operoo.
24. Risk assessments
To meet duty-of-care obligations and reduce potential liability concerns, schools need to conduct risk assessments for a range of activities; including excursions, extracurricular activities and events.
By digitising and automating the creation and approval of risk assessments, Operoo empowers schools to follow a consistent, repeatable and reliable process that mitigates risks and helps ensure the control measures proposed in any risk management plan adhere to industry standards.
25. Teacher Preference Sheets
When preparing for the next school year, it’s critical to find out what teachers want to teach: From subjects and grade levels, to classes, team teaching, and any other program preferences that might pertain to your school. With Operoo, designing, distributing and collecting feedback sheets or surveys is a breeze.
And, easily track completed responses and quickly identify staff members who are lagging behind. Even aggregate results in a spreadsheet for review.
To hear how schools like yours are already embracing Operoo for Teachers Preferences, Policy Sign-Offs and a range of other staff workflows, WATCH THIS WEBINAR >
26. Student contracts
Automatically distribute student policies, agreements and contracts to parents or students — from Mobile Phone, Safety, or Discipline Contracts, to Internet Usage Agreements and Behavioural Expectations — so that everyone can hit the ground running in September.
We’ve been working with schools across the UK to digitize the distribution, collection and tracking of all student contracts, as part of their start-of-year onboarding workflows.
27. Community consultations, engagement and sign-ups
Schools often conduct initiatives, run events, or seek feedback from the broader community (people who are necessarily registered staff, parents or students). Ordinarily, this process can be messy, manual, and deliver unreliable submissions that are difficult to collate and track.
Operoo public eForms enable schools to digitally collect, track and analyse data collected from those outside their four walls: From school open days, volunteering requests, donations, feedback surveys, and a swathe of school events (productions, music nights, information evenings and more).
28. EAL Parent Survey and Support Services distribution
Our school communities are becoming increasingly multicultural. Give your foreign language families the added support they deserve by making it easy to digitally access EAL Parent Surveys as well as supporting documentation and services.
And, deliver this content straight to their mobile phones, where they can automatically receive everything in their language of choice.
29. Individual Education Plans
Individual Education Plans (IEPs) are essential to help map and monitor a student’s unique learning needs. However, completing the associated documentation, and getting the IEP approved, can be slow and cumbersome.
With Operoo, you can distribute all IEP documents to parents and staff digitally, embedding automated approval workflows, to ensure each person can quickly complete and sign-off-on the plan.
30. Student subject and GCSE course selection
Every year, term or semester (depending on the type of school and year level), students across the UK schooling system select the subjects or courses they want to undertake. That’s a large recurring process, involving the collection and collation of large quantities of data, as well as subsequent follow-up actions such as internal approvals, acceptance or rejection notifications, and teacher communications.
By automating the process in Operoo, you receive student course preferences within minutes; not days, weeks or months. Easily route responses to the right place at the right time — to the Careers Counselor or Assistant Principal — to avoid unnecessary scheduling delays. And, automatically trigger follow-up actions based on submissions received, including the distribution of student contracts, onboarding documents, handbooks, fees and more.
31. School meals program management
Accurately disseminating, collecting and processing pupil premium / free school meal applications play an important role regarding student wellbeing and school funding.
Operoo helps schools digitize these forms, then distribute them straight to parents’ smartphones, to drive significantly higher and faster response rates. Operoo schools have reported receiving 100 percent of their lunch forms back, at record pace, without any manual follow-up.
For example, Allerton High School was able to arrange free school meals for eligible students through Operoo — even during remote learning.
To hear more about how Allerton High School is using Operoo, access the webinar and case study HERE >
32. Injury and incident reporting
As Irish playwright and activist, George Bernard Shaw, once said: “Spontaneous events require careful rehearsal”. And, that certainly applies to injury reporting and incident management.
You’ll never be able to know exactly when a reportable incident or injury will occur within your school; but one thing’s for sure — you know they will. And, when they do, they need to be managed in a consistent, timely manner. Their frequency and need for uniform responses make them an ideal target for automation. And, by planning for such occurrences, you can avoid spending undue time dealing with them on an ad-hoc basis.
With Operoo, schools across the UK are able to empower authorised staff to immediately log incidents and injury as they happen, rather than relying on memory and mountains of retrospective paperwork, from any device. Immediate documentation through Operoo ensures accurate information is sent directly to school administrators, streamlines insurance claims, ensures you meet duty-of-care obligations, minimizes liability, and provides better analysis of how and why incidents occur.
33. School and DfE announcements
Never again struggle with lost and crumpled announcements, hidden at the bottom of school bags.
Operoo has helped digitally distribute dozens of school and DfE announcements to families with a single click.
Easily collect digital signatures and acknowledgements from parents for any document: From principal letters, policy updates, out-of-school-uniform days and more.
34. Ordering and payments
Digitizing the collection of payments and consents is important. But, ensuring they’re collected within the same processes is even more important. Because, if requested, collected and collated separately, you’re left tediously — and manually — matching consent and payments to the right individual and the right activity.
With Operoo, schools consolidate payment and form-based processes in the same seamless workflow. As a result, 98 percent of Operoo payment requests are returned without any confusion or manual follow-up whatsoever: From school fees, uniform ordering, extracurricular activity payments, books and supplies, athletic fees and more.
For further details, check out our webinar: Going Cashless, as well as Paperless.
35. Opt out forms
Determining how, and who, to exclude from school programs and services usually requires constant management.
By digitizing standard Opt Out Forms, and combining them with dynamic group management in Operoo, schools can automate both the collection of opt-out forms and ongoing segmentation of the students to which they apply — from military, sex ed or photographic consent opt outs.
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About Operoo (formerly CareMonkey)
Operoo is a School Operations and Productivity Platform. We streamline routine and recurring operational tasks with process automation and digital workflow management capabilities.
Operoo is helping thousands of schools and other organizations around the world to eliminate slow, expensive and repetitive paper-based tasks. Operoo empowers schools and districts to save time and resources by automating operational workflows, thereby increasing staff productivity, parental engagement and student participation.
Streamline and digitize any school or district process, drastically reducing the associated costs: From permission forms, payments, and school trips; to emergency contact cards, incident reporting, staff agreements, student onboarding and more. And, effectively communicate with staff, parents and your whole school community in over 100 languages with Operoo’s multi-language capability.
With Operoo, ensure every dollar and every minute possible is focused on students, rather than wasting resources on operational inefficiencies.
For more information, visit www.operoo.com
