Why Bad Scheduling Is Costing Your Business More Than You Think

Wasted Payroll Is Wasted Money 

One of the most common scheduling mistakes is overstaffing or understaffing shifts in your business - and both are as bad as each other. If you’re overstaffing, it means you’re basically paying people to stand around doing nothing because they’re not needed, and if you’re understaffing, it’s just going to lead to stressed out employees, poor customer service, and, in the end, lots of lost sales. 

If you don’t have a clear system for tracking demand and matching it to different staffing levels, you could be essentially bleeding money on every shift, one way or another. So of course, why not look at historical data to predict peak times and then plan shifts according to that information? Then you’ll be able to be sure you’re not overloading some employees while others don’t get enough to do. 

Burnout Leads To Higher Staff Turnover

Happy employees stay with your business and work hard, and unhappy, overworked employees leave - it’s really that simple. And since staff turnover is something you need to keep an eye on because it can affect not just your cash flow but also morale and productivity, it makes sense to schedule people properly; it can save a lot of problems down the line. 

That’s because bad scheduling can lead to staff being called in last minute and losing personal time, unfair shift distribution (where it seems like some employees always get the worst shifts), and long, exhausting shifts without enough recovery time before the next one - that’s easily going to lead to burnout and resentment, which isn’t going to be great when it comes to creating a good, positive working environment for everyone.

When all this happens, you’ll have more staff quitting, more hours spent training new staff, more money spent on hiring, and a constantly rotating workforce which makes it hard for people to form connections and really get to know the people they’re working with (which actually makes quite the difference). Fixing your scheduling means keeping employees happy, reducing turnover, and cutting recruitment costs - positives no matter what way you look at things. 

Chaos Kills Productivity 

Have you ever had a last-minute cancellation that threw the entire day into chaos? Or found that an employee was double-booked and you had no backup plan? That’s what bad scheduling can do to you, which is yet another reason why you’ve got to get on top of it in a way that works for you and everyone else, from your team to your clients. 

Bad scheduling usually means you’ll have missed appointments (which means unhappy customers), staff confusion, and managers wasting their time fixing scheduling issues instead of focusing on bigger tasks. A well-organised scheduling system can make sure that if someone calls in sick or can’t work for any reason, there’s a backup plan in place, and that can turn the entire day around. Ideally, it’s something your customers won’t even notice has had to be put into action because it all happens so smoothly. 

Unhappy Customers Means Lost Revenue

As we’ve just said, the best outcome for any kind of scheduling (or scheduling change) is for your customers not to notice anything has happened, and to get the service they expect without any issues. However, it’s important to know that if your scheduling is a mess, your clients will notice (and you may well have been on the other side of things when dealing with a business, so you’ll know what we mean - it’s obvious when something is amiss). 

If a customer books an appointment and their provider doesn’t show up, they might not give you a second chance - there are so many options these days that a customer can easily just pick another business to buy from or work with, and even if you’ve treated them well in the past, just one missed appointment or scheduling problem can mean none of that means anything at all. And it’s not just about missed or cancelled appointments either; constantly having to reschedule or your team members always being late or in a hurry so they can’t give their full attention is always going to lead to big issues, and it’s going to affect your bottom line and your reputation. 

Managers Waste Time 

If your scheduling is taking hours every week, something is very wrong - it shouldn’t be such a hard job, and if it is, that might be why it keeps going wrong (you’re rushing to get it done and not checking, for example). Manually updating spreadsheets, making endless phone calls to cover shifts, or constantly checking who’s available is a huge waste of time - time that could actually be spent on growing your business instead, which is surely the best thing to do. 

The solution is automation where and when possible. The fact is that modern tools can help so much - they’ll totally eliminate the guesswork you’ve been working with, reduce errors (it’s still wise to check, just in case), and essentially allow managers to focus on bigger priorities. Using something like homecare rostering software is a great way to make scheduling a lot simpler and reduce your admin time, while also meaning you’re totally sure that every shift is covered with enough people for the work that needs to be done. Software like this can make scheduling quick and easy, so it’s definitely worth investing in. 

No Room For Growth

A business that’s constantly fire-fighting scheduling problems (and other issues, come to that) has absolutely no time for anything else - or at least not the big, time-consuming things like expansion, bringing in new services, or even just making your current offerings more efficient. 

That’s because if managers are too busy fixing schedules all the time, they’re not able to focus on long-term goals because there’s no time (not to mention the energy needed) to do it. And if staff are always quitting because they’re frustrated about your scheduling problems, hiring new staff takes priority over and above growth - not that growth would be possible with people coming and going all the time. Plus if clients are unhappy, all you’re doing is trying to keep them instead of looking for new ones, which is what growth is all about. 

So as you can see, a bad scheduling system is basically holding your business back. But if you can fix the problem, growth suddenly becomes possible again, and you’ll feel a massive sense of relief, as will everyone else involved in your business. Now isn’t that worth getting your scheduling right for?