John Ross, CEO of Symphony Employer Solutions

A study of 2017 activity indicates that overtime in New England long-term care facilities has increased 60% in the last three years.

It’s common to attribute overtime to the licensed staffing challenge. But it is also common to see employees, who have the necessary credentials, working fewer than 40 hours in a pay period when similar staff are in paid overtime. This indicates that overtime can be managed.

Deeper analysis reveals three key ingredients necessary to control Overtime: 1. When, 2. Who, and 3. Why.

When? It’s harder to manage OT reactively at the end of a week. TIMING is key. Accurately forecasting the occurrence of OT during the week facilitates changes to the schedule to prevent undesirable OT from occurring.

Ask your current time and attendance vendor for the availability of real-time tools that provide early warning indicators for people whose work progression will take them into overtime. Again, you need to know this information as early in a weekly period as possible.

Who? The role of your forecasting tool is to identify those employees who will be in overtime in the future AND those potential replacement employees who have the required credentials to pick up shifts without going into overtime at the end of the week. Schedulers are busy people. The harder it is to monitor forecasted hours and find replacements, the tougher it is to get schedulers to manage overtime.

Why? Once you have the tools in place, the next step is to identify why employees are going into overtime. Overtime can happen with an extra shift or it can accumulate slowly by dribs and drabs. Here are behaviors to focus on:

Perhaps the biggest culprit is early-ins and late-outs. Which employees are punching in early and/or punching out late? Are the employees being helpful, covering for late arrivals or early departures? Or is there time-abuse occurring?

Employees who habitually arrive late, or have a pattern of leaving early, may not be the ones PAID Overtime, but they may be CAUSING Overtime. Being able to observe patterns of behavior is key to changing behavior.

Rather than having a supervisor standing at the clock being “big brother” and creating a morale issue, can an automated points system be implemented to resolve simple behavioral issues like this? For example, a late punch-in automatically generates a point. Points accumulate and warnings are generated as thresholds are crossed. Again, ask your vendor about the availability of this kind of tool.

Less frequent but often costlier is the issue of a No-Call-No-Show or Call-out. Who gets the call to fill the open shift? The immediate next step by the supervisor is critically important. Do supervisors take the path of least resistance and call someone easy to reach and always available, regardless of how many hours they’ve already worked that week? The easier it is to identify employees who can pick up the shift without causing overtime, the more likely overtime cost will be minimized.Installing additional time clocks on separate floors or wings where the employees actually work can also reduce Overtime. “Wander Time,” the time between punching in and starting work or stopping work and punching out, can be a significant contributor to extra hours in facilities. Ask your vendor to complete a small study to understand the cost of wander time. Even eliminating a couple of minutes, in and out, for every punch for every employee may save a facility thousands of dollars a year. This tactical step might also improve recordkeeping around working through breaks — yet another contributor to overtime, and a possible compliance risk.

In conclusion, to combat overtime, supervisors need the tools and training to identify where overtime will occur before it happens — and then they need to know who is causing overtime, and why.

When replacing call-outs or absentees, the scheduling system needs an embedded, easy-to-use tool that automatically searches for replacement candidates who have the correct credentials AND are farthest from overtime. With these capabilities, overtime can be reduced within a pay period and the staff behaviors that create overtime can be addressed to manage long-term change and improved cost control.

Yes, staffing is tight. But if you’re finding that Overtime is an issue, with the right tools and training, significant gains can be made. Savings can then be put back into recruiting and retention programs. Not only will the facility perform better financially, but it will also prevent common consequences of overtime — mistakes, burnout and turnover — each of which has cascading impacts on facility ratings and profitability.

Contact your current time & attendance vendor to facilitate an assessment of your time-keeping environment and explore the available analytical tools that will help control unwanted overtime. The potential return on investment is significant.

John Ross is CEO of Symphony Employer Solutions in Natick, MA.