Shift economics report · Preview
The hidden cost of manual shift management.
How integrated staffing reclaims profit, people, time and quality. This is the short version. The full report publishes next week.
Co-authored by Care Hires & Care Home DigiHive
First look
The cost of a shift isn't the rate on the invoice.
When a shift drops and internal cover can be found, rostering software handles it well. When it can't, a second workflow kicks in: bank coordination, agency sourcing, compliance checks, rate comparison, reconciliation. It runs on emails, phone calls and spreadsheets, it is almost invisible on the P&L, and it is where the real money leaks out.
Total Shift Cost makes that leak visible: the full economic footprint of one filled shift. A short-notice agency shift that looks like £277 on the invoice actually costs around £452.
Total Shift Cost makes that leak visible: the full economic footprint of one filled shift. A short-notice agency shift that looks like £277 on the invoice actually costs around £452.
These figures come from a real 40-bed home in the south of England, with a long-standing manager and genuinely good negotiated rates. Even there, more than a third of the true cost of every shift never showed up in reporting.
One shift
£176
One home, a year
?
A group of six
?
A 40-bed home fills hundreds of agency shifts a year. The report puts a number on all three.
£277
what the invoice says
£452
what the shift costs
£176
never appears anywhere
The takeaway
Five components. Only two ever reach your invoice.
Direct rate
The invoice cost
On invoice
Premium load
The uplift for last-minute fills
Rarely tracked
Spillover
Perm overtime covering the gap
Hidden in payroll
Admin
Sourcing, booking, reconciling
Untracked
Continuity & compliance
Handovers, risk, documentation
Untracked
A strong rate card feels like control. It is only ever managing one of the five.
The same shift, run three ways. Squeezing the rate moves the bottom block. Everything above it is what the report costs out, line by line.
Negotiating a better rate saved
£18
per shift
Fixing the whole workflow saved
6×
more than that
Get the full report
Now go and find your own number.
01
The full Total Shift Cost model, costed component by component
Every line of the model, with the loaded manager and coordinator rates, the on-cost multiplier and the VAT treatment published in full, so you can rebuild it against your own numbers rather than take ours.
02
The two-workflow trap and the internal-first cascade
The eleven steps a manager actually runs when internal cover fails, and four tiers from redeploy to open market, ranked by what each costs you in money and in continuity.
03
The complete three-way comparison, line by line
Typical, real-world and integrated, including every figure held back from this preview and what the difference is worth over a year and across a group.
04
The four-pillar self-assessment, scored
Thirteen statements, one score out of 65, four operating bands and what to do next in each.
05
The Total Shift Cost calculator, released with the report
Put in your own rates and shift volumes and get your figure, per shift and per year, in about a minute. Not available before then.
Figures are modelled on a real 40-bed residential service in the south of England, using a 12-hour HCA day shift booked at short notice. Rates, on-cost multipliers, VAT treatment and shift volumes are published in full in the report. Hourly rates are not published in this preview.
Co-authored by Care Hires & Care Home DigiHive