The Hidden Costs of Manual Scheduling

In long-term care, scheduling often occurs in Excel, dry-erase boards, or even paper calendars tacked up at nursing stations. For many facilities, it’s the way it’s always been done. Schedulers do their best to keep things running, juggling last-minute callouts, shift swaps, and employee preferences without a centralized system. But manual scheduling comes with hidden costs: extra hours, missed breaks, burnout, and a lack of visibility that impacts care.

 

Schedulers are superheroes, but they shouldn’t have to be.

Schedulers in long-term care are constantly putting out fires. Their ability to fill shifts while navigating regulatory requirements, staffing shortages, and turnover is impressive. But without the right tools, even the best scheduler is forced to operate in reactive mode.

Scheduling software built specifically for long-term care transforms the role. Instead of spending hours tracking down coverage, schedulers can automate recurring shifts, set staffing rules, and notify staff about changes instantly. It reduces stress, improves accuracy, and gives leadership real-time data to make informed decisions.

Cut unnecessary overtime.

In Covr’s work with skilled nursing and senior care facilities, we’ve found that more than 30% of overtime is avoidable. The root cause? Small inefficiencies that add up fast.

One common culprit is early and late punches. Employees clocking in before their shift or staying after creates unnecessary overtime that chips away at your labor budget. Another key issue: missed or shortened meal breaks, which create compliance risks and additional labor costs.

Scheduling software helps administrators identify and correct these issues. With real-time labor reports, you can:

• See overtime trends across your facility and drill down to individual employees.
• Identify who’s clocking in early or staying late.
• Track skipped or short breaks.

Then, use automated text reminders to create a culture of accountability. A simple message to remind staff to take their lunch or follow scheduled work hours helps reduce unnecessary costs.

Automate smart staffing decisions.

While a dedicated scheduler may be willing to put in the time to calculate PDD and overtime percentages, factoring in every variable every time an adjustment is needed is an impossible ask.

With scheduling software, schedulers can fill shifts based on actual hours worked, licensing requirements, and acuity levels—not guesswork. The system automatically recommends the best staff to fill an open shift and can prioritize employees with fewer scheduled hours to avoid overtime.

Need to incentivize a hard-to-fill shift? Add a bonus or make it overtime-eligible and send a group message directly from the platform. It’s a smarter, faster way to manage labor.

Bottom-line impact

One Nexion facility, previously scheduling staff 8% over budgeted hours, now operates 2% under budget, while still meeting staffing requirements. Another Nexion location aligned its scheduled PPD with the budget and cut overtime hours by 56%. These changes have a real bottom-line impact, with each facility saving, on average, $77K per year.

Time is money.

At one skilled nursing facility in Walla Walla, Washington, manual scheduling was draining time and resources.

“It was just a chaotic mess,” said staffing coordinator Notja Busnardo. “Having to change one piece of paper at one nurse’s station and then change another piece of paper at the other nurses’ station. [The schedule] wasn’t located in one central place where everybody can look at it.”

Before adopting a scheduling system, it took up to 16 days to finalize a schedule. With Covr, it's a matter of plugging in names. "It has been so easy and so exceptionally worth it,” Notja shared.

Those 16 days can now be used to improve onboarding processes, check in with employees one-on-one, or care for residents.

When schedulers spend less time wrestling with paperwork, they gain time to work proactively rather than reactively.

Those benefits extend beyond the staffing coordinator. Administrators often step in to cover shifts when staffing is tight, adding to an already demanding workload. Responsive nursing staff may also be over-scheduled or asked to fill gaps more often than others, leading to burnout.

With a scheduling system, open shifts are automatically shared with every eligible employee, giving everyone a fair shot to help. This improves pickup rates by 50% and reduces the need for administrators to intervene.

The Covr difference.

Covr is a scheduling and messaging system purpose-built for long-term care. With Covr, teams automate scheduling, gain real-time visibility into labor data, and communicate clearly across shifts, all from one easy-to-use platform.

	Manual Scheduling	Covr
Schedules are built automatically based on a designated pattern.
Allow eligible employees to pick up an open shift via the mobile app.
Real-time labor reporting
Central communication hub with group messaging
Schedule changes are updated in one location

 

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