Tax Rises! - Staff Shortage, or Staff Scheduling Issues? See How Staff Costs Are Impacting You and Your Business.

In this post, we take a look at the impact that poor staff scheduling can have on all kinds of organisations, before examining how the right tools can make this much easier and save money.


This year, more than 90% of local councils increased council tax rates in April - with just 22 out of England’s 353 councils freezing rates, and just 1 (East Hampshire) choosing to cut them.

Why? Alongside the social care bill, “Rising staff costs” is one of the most popular reasons cited by councils as driving the need to increase tax rates - but could they be doing more with their existing human resources?

Are councils getting every bit of performance out of their existing teams, or is time and effort being wasted through poor staff scheduling? The truth is likely to be a combination of the two, and improving scheduling is one of the most effective ways to increase capacity without recruiting.

Every organisation understands that employing people comes with a cost – and just how important it is to get as much as possible out of their personnel.

Recruiting new personnel – the obvious solution

When teams reach capacity, resources seem tight and problems occur – it’s natural for organisations to blame a lack of human resources as the root of the problem. At first glance, recruiting and taking on more staff seems like the natural solution, and that inevitably means taking on additional cost.

With the average salary in the UK now running at £27,600 – the average cost of training and employing someone new, full time, is upwards of £30,000 each year when pensions and contributions are taken into account (before the cost of recruitment is added in!).

With that in mind, it’s easy to see the impact that expanding and taking on new staff (especially if they aren’t directly generating revenue) can have on the bottom line of any business.

Counting the cost of poor staff scheduling

In many organisations, it isn’t just a lack of staff that causes problems – it’s poor staff scheduling and efficiency. By planning human resources better, and getting more out of their existing teams through better staff scheduling, organisations of all sizes can drive efficiency and cut the costs associated with growth.

Scheduling employees is a challenge for every organisation – especially as businesses grow, and in organisations with multiple departments and teams, like councils. It’s particularly difficult when teams don’t have the right tools to do the job.

Inadequate employee scheduling inevitably leads to wasted human resources and impacts on productivity... and the truth is that the vast majority of organisations could do much better when it comes to managing and organising their staff.

Why manual scheduling doesn’t work

Most businesses simply don’t have a dedicated scheduling system in place – instead they rely on a manual, in-house system, usually developed by necessity over time as the organisation grows.

Many systems still rely on white boards, sticky notes, excel spreadsheets, group emails and a multitude of calendars from different providers, often managed by a select group of personnel from across the organisation.

Maintaining multiple physical records across different platforms is time consuming, messy and disorganised. It also drains existing resources, requiring someone (or a couple of people) to spend time and effort managing the scheduling process. The innate inefficiency and inflexibility of manual systems inevitably leads to human error, wasted hours and lost resources – impacting on staff productivity and business profitability.

21st century staff scheduling from Schedule It

Technology provides a better all-round solution to manual scheduling. Manual scheduling is more expensive and time consuming, whilst being less accurate, and less flexible than modern employee scheduling systems.

High quality, contemporary scheduling software, like Schedule It makes everything easier – cutting the time, effort, waste and cost associated with managing teams. The results? You get more from each member of staff, increasing productivity, without the cost of recruiting additional members of staff.

See for yourself and try the Employee Scheduling from Schedule It free today. With nothing to lose why wait?

Last updated, 20 October 2023, 08:35