3 schedule errors that cost you 138 overtime hours per month
At Tatry Peak Management, we see it every week. Hotel owners in Zakopane and the surrounding area lose money because they arrange schedules on paper without looking at data from reservation systems. In one facility at Krupówki, incorrect planning generated exactly 138 unnecessary overtime hours on a monthly scale, which drains the budget faster than you think at current rates.
Fixed planning with variable occupancy
The biggest problem is sticking to fixed shift hours regardless of how many people are actually sleeping in the hotel. In an audit conducted in March 2024 for a guesthouse with 34 rooms, we noticed that the breakfast staff started work at 6:15 every day. Meanwhile, data from the system showed that on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, the average number of guests dropped by 42.7%. Despite this, four people worked in the kitchen and in the dining room, although two would have sufficed with this occupancy.
Such an approach generates idle time for which you pay the full rate. Numbers don't lie: it was enough to shift the start time of two people by 45 minutes on low-occupancy days. In a month, this saved 27 hours of work that were previously simply wasted waiting for the first guest. Work done on time does not require keeping people by force when they have nothing to do (honestly, it also demotivates your team).
Numbers don't lie: planning staff without insight into actual occupancy is the easiest way to a financial hole.
Lack of 15-minute buffers for shift handover
The second error is shift overlap without a specific plan. We often see a situation where the morning shift ends at 2:00 PM and the afternoon shift starts at exactly the same time. The result? The morning receptionist stays 20-30 minutes longer to talk about reported faults or uncollected invoices. This happens 22 times a month, and suddenly you have 11 overtime hours generated just because there was no procedure for transferring information in 5 minutes.
In a hotel in Kościelisko, where we introduced a short digital report instead of 'talking over coffee', the shift handover time was reduced from 24 minutes to just 6 minutes. This is real savings. No more wasting goods and time. Every employee knows exactly what to do from the first minute of their shift, and you don't pay for 'hanging on the phone' after working hours because everything is in black and white in the system.
No more wasting goods and time on endless gossip at the shift change.
Ignoring the real time it takes to clean a room
Many managers assume that cleaning a Standard room always takes 25 minutes. This is a theory that rarely holds up in Tatra conditions, especially in winter when guests bring in mud and snow. In February 2024, we measured the work time of 12 maids in a high-standard facility. It turned out that the real time was 31.4 minutes. Planning a schedule based on understated norms causes the ladies not to make it by 3:00 PM and they have to stay longer.
Those extra 6 minutes per room with 48 rooms per day is almost 5 overtime hours per day for the entire team. Instead of forcing people to unrealistic results, it's better to make the schedule realistic and introduce a bonus system for no complaints, rather than for speed. Thanks to this, you avoid staff turnover, which costs a fortune in Zakopane – finding and training a new person costs an average of 3,240 PLN in direct costs.
Lack of flexibility in contracts and division of roles
The final point is rigid assignment to roles. In small and medium facilities (below 87 rooms), a lack of multi-tasking kills the budget. If a waiter cannot help with check-in at peak arrival times at 2:00 PM because 'it's not his department', you have to take an extra person to the reception for 2 hours. This generates overtime for people who could be interchangeable. Proven in Tatra conditions – training one person from the restaurant to help with handing out keys saved our client 1,840 PLN in July.
We are not suggesting overworking people, but smart division of labor. The schedule must be a living organism. If you see that the restaurant is empty and there's a queue of 14 people at the reception, you must have people ready to support. At Tatry Peak Management, we teach how to arrange such a system so that no one feels exploited and the job is done on time. No fluff and unnecessary theory about human resource management.
How to regain those hours in 30 days?
Start by auditing the last three months. Count exactly how much overtime you paid and what hours they arise in. If 78.4% of them are mornings between 8:00 and 10:00, you have a problem with breakfast organization. If they arise after 4:00 PM, check-in or cleaning is failing. We at Tatry Peak Management do such an audit in 48 hours, extracting data directly from your POS and PMS system.
Implementing new schedule rules doesn't have to be painful. In one of the hotels we have worked with since September 2017, the reduction of overtime by 94.6% took only two settlement cycles. It's a matter of consistency and clear messages to the team. Remember that a satisfied employee is one who finishes work on time and gets paid without mistakes. Take care of this, and your operational costs will drop by at least 12% in the first quarter.
Reducing overtime by 94.6% took us only two months. It's a matter of pure math.
