The hidden costs of poor workforce management

How gaps in your job lifecycle could be costing you time, money and customer trust 

What are the hidden costs of poor workforce management? And how can you avoid them before they start impacting your margins? 

If you manage a dispersed team of engineers, whether for planned installations or reactive maintenance, you know just how many moving parts there are behind every job. From identifying faults and raising work orders to dispatching the right people with the right parts, every step matters. 

For some, this means coordinating a team of 10 to 30 engineers working locally on specialised assets, such as fire systems or vending machines. For others, it’s hundreds or even thousands of operatives delivering critical services nationwide, keeping organisations like supermarkets, data centres and utilities running smoothly. 

Whatever your scale, the goal is the same: deliver great service, meet customer expectations and do it as efficiently as possible. 

But what’s less obvious is this: when the process breaks down, at any point, your profitability takes the hit. Whether it's a misdiagnosed job, a missed permit, or a missing part, the costs add up quickly. 

This article breaks down those hidden costs step by step, so you can spot the warning signs early and take action where it matters most. 

Step 1: Job Creation 

Are you setting the job up for success? 

Job creation might sound simple—someone spots a problem, a job gets raised and the work gets done—but this first step is one of the most common sources of inefficiency in workforce management. When done poorly, it quietly chisels away at your time, margins and customer relationships. 

Jobs can be triggered in many ways: 

• Something’s broken: An asset has failed, and it’s impacting service. 

• An alarm sounds: Maybe it’s a pump failure or power issue, but the exact cause isn’t clear. 

• A scheduled service: There’s no fault, just routine maintenance to preserve a warranty. 

• A call to your service centre, or an automated request through a portal or app. 

However, the work is raised, the real cost appears when the job lacks the right information. Incomplete or incorrect data leads to: 

• Abortive site visits 

• Incorrect parts or tools being sent 

• Missed SLAs 

• Frustrated engineers 

• Additional admin and rework 

• Higher costs per job 

To avoid this, your job creation process needs to consistently capture answers to key questions: 

• Which asset is affected? What’s the asset ID, make/model, and precise location? 

• Are there any access issues, such as roof-based equipment, basement sites or restricted areas? 

• What’s the reported fault? Is there sensor or instrumentation data available? 

• What might be causing the issue? Is it urgent? Can it be temporarily mitigated? 

• Are any permits, access arrangements, or isolations needed? 

• What tools, parts, or specialist skills are required? 

• Can the job be completed within working hours? Is it a two-person task? 

Even experienced teams can struggle with this consistency, especially when multiple people or systems are responsible for raising jobs. Processes evolve over time, staff come and go and informal workarounds creep in. 

The result? Small details are missed. Jobs aren’t set up correctly. And each gap in information increases the chance of a failed first visit, which can double your delivery time, eat into your margins and quietly erode trust with your customers. 

That’s why it’s worth taking a step back. 

One of the most effective ways to get ahead of these issues is through a structured Workforce Management Health Check. It gives you a clearer picture of how your jobs are being created in practice, not just on paper, and where inconsistencies or inefficiencies might be creeping in. 

By pinpointing the gaps in how data is captured, decisions are made and jobs are raised, you can rebuild a more reliable foundation for everything that follows and prevent costly problems before they ever reach the site. 

Step 2: Work Planning 

Are you making life harder for your engineers? 

Once the job has been raised, the next hidden cost often creeps in quietly, through planning that’s rushed, inconsistent or unclear. 

At this stage, the success of the job depends not just on who’s been assigned, but rather on whether everything is in place for the work to go ahead smoothly. That means having the right parts, equipment, access, permits and time already factored in. 

It’s not unusual for work to require non-standard considerations: confined spaces, site-specific onboarding, out-of-hours access or even specialist training or tools. Planning for these ahead of time is what keeps your day running. If missed, they’re what grind it to a halt. 

So ask yourself: 

• Are your staff properly briefed the day before? Do they have time to collect the right equipment or spares from a depot or locker? Or is someone responsible for delivering what’s needed to site? 

• Is there enough time in the day for pre-job setup? Do engineers start from home, a depot, or the site? Is their first job realistic based on their start point and travel time? 

• Is your team scheduling efficiently? Do engineers follow an optimised route plan? Are job durations based on real data or rough estimates? What happens when the plan is off—do you have a way of capturing that insight and feeding it back? 

• What happens if a job finishes early? Is there a plan to reallocate spare capacity? Or do those lost hours simply disappear? 

• Does your planning team have full visibility of the labour pool each day? Can they see who’s available, their skill sets, shift patterns and starting locations in one place? 

In small teams, it’s tempting to handle all of this manually with spreadsheets, whiteboards or even back-and-forth emails. But as your team grows, so does the complexity and the cost of getting it wrong. A team of 20+ becomes difficult to coordinate without a more structured system in place. 

That’s why many growing companies begin looking into CMMS (Computerised Maintenance Management Systems) or CAFM (Computer-Aided Facilities Management) platforms, which can help with job scheduling, asset tracking, labour planning and compliance. But before you invest in tech, it's worth understanding the process and people gaps that may be the real blockers. 

And it’s not just about planned jobs. If your team also responds to reactive or emergency work, your daily planning becomes even more delicate. Do you delay scheduled work to accommodate urgent jobs? Or keep a dedicated team for reactive response? Without a clear strategy, urgent work can cause a domino effect of missed targets. 

That’s where a Workforce Management Health Check can help. Rather than jumping straight into new software or restructuring your team, it gives you a clear view of what’s working and what isn’t across your planning process. It highlights the gaps in visibility, ownership and coordination that lead to late jobs, overtime and frustrated engineers. And it gives you practical next steps to improve planning efficiency and reduce avoidable costs, without disrupting delivery. 

Step 3: Work Execution 

Can your engineers actually deliver the job? 

This is the moment of truth. Your engineer arrives at the site, and now the quality of your job creation and planning processes is put to the test. 

At this stage, everything hinges on whether the engineer has what they need to get the job done right the first time.

That includes: 

• Access: Can your engineer find the customer, park up and access the site?  

• Compliance: Did the engineer have all the necessary permits, safety equipment, tools and parts necessary? Often, engineers will carry a standard set of parts and tools to cover a broad range of tasks, but did they have everything they needed?  

• Communication: Was the customer expecting them?  

• Planning: Was there sufficient information on the problem and cause to fix the problem first time, or was follow-up work needed?  

• Timing: Was sufficient time given to undertake the work? 

If even one of those pieces is missing, things begin to unravel. 

A missing permit or unexpected access issue can delay the job. A misdiagnosed fault might require a return visit with different tools. The customer not being informed might mean the engineer is turned away. And if the job overruns? That delay ripples into the rest of the day, resulting in either missed jobs, overtime costs, or knock-on disruption for the next customer. 

You might absorb one or two of these incidents without issue. But over time, they add up to lost productivity, rising costs and reputational damage. 

And let’s not forget the people cost. Engineers working with patchy information, unpredictable days, or unclear job scopes are more likely to feel pressured and less likely to stay in the long term. 

A structured Workforce Management Health Check can uncover where these friction points are really coming from. Are they isolated slip-ups or symptoms of unclear workflows, inconsistent planning or poor internal communication? By mapping out what happens during jobs and connecting it back to your earlier processes, it’ll help you to fix the root causes of problems.  

Step 4: Job Closure 

Are you capturing the insights that drive future performance? 

Job closure is sometimes treated as a minor administrative task, a final tick box at the end of the day. But in reality, it’s one of the most important (and most overlooked) stages of the job lifecycle. 

When done well, it ties up the job professionally, captures valuable data and helps prevent future problems. When rushed or inconsistent, it quietly weakens your asset records, reduces planning accuracy and leaves the door open to missed revenue, repeat faults or delays down the line. 

So, what should a solid job closure process include? 

• Record keeping: Recording the part number fitted, against the correct asset ID 

• Evidence-gathering: Taking before-and-after photographs, especially where they’re a condition for payment 

• Ordering: Reordering any fittings or consumables used 

• Capturing updated information: Was the fault correctly diagnosed? Did the cause match what was originally recorded? 

It’s easy to assume this data will be picked up later. But in practice, this is the moment to learn from the job, while everything is still fresh and accurate. 

What can you learn if this step is done well? 

• How long the job actually took and what it needed This helps you schedule future work more accurately and avoid underestimating job durations or resource needs. 

• Whether your asset records are correct If it took extra time to locate the equipment, you might need to update your asset database. That small change can save hours in future visits. 

• What stock and van inventory should look like By tracking parts used across jobs, you can fine-tune what your engineers carry, reducing the chance of delays due to missing spares. 

• Patterns in faults and asset reliability Over time, you’ll start to see which assets are prone to failure or which types of jobs generate repeat callouts. That insight lets you take a more proactive approach and potentially reduce unplanned downtime altogether. 

Of course, none of this insight is possible if the right information isn’t captured in the first place. And that’s where many businesses fall down. 

Because the customer pays the invoice and the job is technically “done,” the real cost of poor job closure often doesn’t show up straight away. But over time, those missing records, untracked parts and unresolved root causes begin to take their toll. 

The best-performing companies don’t just close the job and move on, but rather use this moment as a chance to improve the next one. 

So... what is inefficient workforce management really costing you? 

The answer depends on your scale, but even with a 20-person workforce, the hidden costs are real: 

• Unused engineer time: £100k+ per year in inefficiency. 

• Repeat visits: Wasted travel and admin time. 

• Overtime: Premium costs for poor planning. 

• Slower invoicing: Delayed cash flow due to missing documentation. 

• Poor data: No way to improve or prevent faults long-term. 

And these are just the visible costs. But your bigger risk might just be lost customers who never say anything and rather just stop calling. 

What next? 

If this article has raised questions for you, or if any part of your workforce feels harder to manage than it should, you’re not alone. 

At ConsultHD, we help service providers understand what’s working, what isn’t and where improvements can be made without disruption.  

Our Workforce Management Health Check is a review that gives you practical insights for where gaps may exist and how to fix them. 

If you want a clearer picture of how efficiently your jobs are really being delivered: 

Book a free 30-minute consultation

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Enquire about a Health Check now