High caseload for social workers can lead to decreased quality of their service. A the newly developed  Caseload Converter enables social service managers to determine the staffing needs of their social services.

The renowned Winterthur study (Eser Davolio et al. 2017; Eser et al. 2019) showed that the number of cases to be managed had an impact on the quality of work and satisfaction of social workers. The higher the number of cases, the faster the process and the less time spent on social support. A shorter period of counselling, combined with a high caseload, leads to a lower rate of people leaving social assistance, which in turn increases costs. In the context of this study, it was shown that a reduction in the caseload enabled closer monitoring of people, resulting in significant additional income thanks to systematic requests for the transfer of benefits upstream of social assistance, as well as an increase in the activity rate of people already in employment.

The Caseload Converter is a calculator that allows specialised and polyvalent social services to determine a sustainable caseload and effective casework on an empirically validated basis. As has been shown in several studies, investing in more staff with more time for effective social support means lower costs per case, quicker and more sustainable discharge of people supported by social assistance, and social workers who are satisfied with their work. Finding methods and tools to calculate caseloads, can help to better allocate human resources in social work and identify needs for additional recruitment.