As 2025 comes to a close, we find ourselves looking back on a year made up not of grand gestures or headline moments — but of thousands of small, meaningful ones.
A year of late-night calls that ended with relief instead of panic.
A year of teams finding their rhythm.
A year of learning, unlearning, laughing, stumbling, rising, and rebuilding stronger.
A year of conversations with leaders who shared their worries, hopes, and victories with us.
Most importantly, it was a year shaped by the people in healthcare and social services who continued to show up — even on the days when it felt impossibly heavy.
At ShiftLink, our guiding belief has always been simple: Simply make a difference.
And this year, that meant more than ever.
Our theme of 2025: Quiet impact that matters
If there’s one thing we learned this year, it’s this:
Making a difference isn’t loud.
It’s quiet.
It’s human.
It’s felt in the moments no one else sees.
It’s the nurse who got to have dinner with her kids because a last-minute shift filled itself in minutes.
It’s the program director who finally slept through the night.
It’s the HR leader who told us that, for the first time, scheduling “felt fair — not frantic.”
It’s the shelter team that went from constant chaos to calm consistency during a crisis period.
These aren’t metrics.
They’re moments.
And they’re the ones that stay with us.
Because that’s what quiet impact looks like — the small shifts that change someone’s day, week, or career.
A message from the heart of ShiftLink
"Out of all our success stories for 2025, one stands out above the rest. A brand new client, just a few days into their system use told me about a long-serving member of their scheduling team who, after using ShiftLink on her first day, went home whistling. The client told me 'in all her years of service, no one has EVER heard her whistle'. For me, that statement encapsulated everything about what ShiftLink stands for, why it was created in the first place and what we strive to accomplish for our clients; to simply make a difference."
From Richard Bicknell, COO, ShiftLink
"In 2025, our technology gave people something invaluable back: their time. By intelligently automating callouts, optimizing rotations, and anticipating staffing needs before they became emergencies, ShiftLink transformed scheduling from a daily burden into a solved problem. The real measure of our success isn't in the algorithms we built—it's in the managers who stopped working weekends, the staff who gained predictability in their lives, and the organizations that finally broke free from the chaos of last-minute scrambles."
From Justin Kostek, CTO, ShiftLink
Our 2025 highlights — Not numbers, But Moments
Sometimes the most meaningful improvements in an organization don’t come from sweeping changes—they come from small, thoughtful shifts in how we work every day. And that’s exactly what we’ve seen as teams across hospitals and community organizations have embraced ShiftLink.
The changes may look subtle at first, but their impact on staff well-being, team dynamics, and the day-to-day experience of work has been extraordinary.
At the Salvation Army Centre of Hope, for example, the introduction of ShiftLink helped reduce the burden of managers needing to cover vacant shifts themselves. What seemed like a small operational fix ended up returning more than 500 hours of leadership time back into the organization each year. But what mattered even more was what staff told us—they felt noticeably more at ease.
The pressure of filling urgent shifts, negotiating availability, and managing last-minute callouts had created a level of stress that many had come to accept as “normal.” With ShiftLink, that stress began to lift, and teams shared that they finally felt a sense of balance returning to their work.
At Concordia Hospital, that same feeling showed up almost instantly. Within just 48 hours of rollout, nearly one-third of staff signed up and activated their accounts. People told us they did it because the system felt intuitive and respectful of their time. It didn’t add complexity; it removed it. It helped staff feel more in control—not anxious about missing information or tied to multiple channels just to stay on top of shifts.
That sense of fairness and transparency strengthened trust between staff and leadership. And that is something you can’t measure on a dashboard, but you feel it in every hallway and handoff.
One of the most powerful examples came again from the Salvation Army. Leadership there decided to integrate ShiftLink directly into their psychologically safe workplace policy.
This wasn’t symbolic—it reflected what staff were sharing:
- Their environment felt calmer.
- Communication felt clearer.
- Work felt more predictable and less chaotic.
The reduction in phone calls, the clarity of shift postings, and the fairness built into how shifts were communicated all contributed to a greater sense of psychological safety.
At Deer Lodge Centre, where the scheduling workload once felt overwhelming, ShiftLink introduced something everyone kept describing as “ease.” In one year, more than 22,000 shifts were posted with an 87% fill rate, but the real change was emotional. The energy-draining back-and-forth that once consumed entire afternoons was replaced with a system that handled the heavy lifting. Staff could focus on care instead of coordination.
Our clients also shaped how ShiftLink evolved this year. The enhanced Call-Out Management workflow, developed directly from on-the-ground feedback, allowed one Winnipeg site to post 4,000 shifts in a single day—something previously unimaginable without overwhelming the team.
And the introduction of the Rotation Builder has redefined scheduling efficiency altogether. Multi-week rotations that once took days or weeks to prepare can now be built in minutes. The system automatically considers labour rules, CBA requirements, seniority, existing schedules, and staff availability. For many teams, this has been described as a true game changer—removing a major source of pressure and eliminating repetitive, error-prone manual work.
Across every site, the theme has been the same:
staff feel lighter, leaders feel supported, and organizations feel more human again.
ShiftLink didn’t just make scheduling easier—it made people’s workdays feel calmer, clearer, and kinder.
Our favourite lesson of 2025
What we’ve learned this year is simple:
Ease matters. Fairness matters. People matter.
ShiftLink’s greatest impact hasn’t been in the numbers—though they tell an incredible story. It has been in the small but powerful moments where someone says:
- “I feel less overwhelmed.”
- “I finally got my evenings back.”
- “This feels fair.”
- “Work feels lighter now.”
Those moments are the heartbeat of our mission.
We are reminded every day that healthcare and community organizations run on people—people who deserve clarity, balance, and systems that respect the weight they carry. The lesson of 2025 wasn’t about new features or faster workflows. It was about rediscovering the value of calm, clarity, and care in environments that rarely slow down.
And at the center of it all is our purpose:
Simply Make a Difference.
Not loudly. Not dramatically. But in the small, meaningful ways that make someone’s day better, someone’s workload easier, or someone’s stress a little lighter.
Looking ahead to 2026
If 2025 was about quiet impact, 2026 is about deepening it.
We’re excited to:
- Expand fairness and fatigue-aware scheduling
- Roll out new AI capabilities that support better decisions
- Strengthen our tools for healthcare, shelters, and social service organizations
- Build even more intuitive workflows for leaders and frontline teams
- Continue listening closely — because you tell us what matters most
Our north star remains the same:
To make a meaningful difference in the lives of the people who care for others.
And finally - Thank-you !
As we wrap up 2025, we want to say thank you — truly.
To our clients, partners, advisors, and friends: you’ve trusted us with something deeply personal — your people.
We don’t take that lightly.
From our family to yours, we wish you a warm, restful, joy-filled season — whether you’re celebrating at home or showing up for a shift that keeps your community safe.
Here’s to another year of showing up, supporting each other, and making a difference — simply.
💙
The ShiftLink Team
