About the group
The Taylor & Taylor Care Home Group runs four homes: Esmere Gardens, Shipston Lodge, Banbury Heights and The Julie Richardson Nursing Home. Charles Taylor, Group Operations Director, is responsible for operational performance across the group, including rota integrity, agency spend and payroll accuracy. The brief for Care Centre was to bring all four homes onto one platform, with one staff record, one app and one login, and with standards set once for the group and applied in every home.
The challenge
Before Care Centre, the group ran its homes on separate, largely paper-based systems. The operations team faced four recurring problems, each a six-figure annual cost:
- Paper rotas routinely over-staffed the floor, because managers planned in extra headcount and nothing showed when it was not needed
- Payroll ran from paper timesheets reconciled by hand at month end, and disputes reached the manager's desk with no record to check them against
- Agency cover was booked reactively every weekend, at a premium, for shifts the home's own staff could have taken with two days' notice
- Each home ran its own version of the same processes, with no common standard across the group
“We were managing well, but we were managing variance, not patterns. Each home solved its own problems each week. The group never compounded. It just averaged.”
What changed
Over 18 months, all four homes moved onto Care Centre. The group began with CareRota™, including Time & Attendance, and CareHR™, and added further products as each home settled in. Charles credits one mechanism for most of the saving: an hours budget for every role in every home, with Restrict By Budget enabled so the rota cannot be planned beyond it, and clocked hours shown against the plan on the same screen.
CareRota — hours budgets by role
An hours budget is set for every role, for each day and each home. With Restrict By Budget enabled, the rota cannot be planned beyond it. Planned and clocked hours appear on one screen, so a variance shows during the week rather than at month end. This is the £280k line.
Time & Attendance and payroll
Staff clock in at a wall tablet with a PIN, or from their phone within the home's clock-in range, and every clock writes the timesheet. Extra time is held for approval before it is paid, and approved leave flows into the timesheet as paid or unpaid. Payroll admin fell from 10 hours to under 2 a week. This is the £140k line.
Open shifts and bank staff
When a gap opens, eligible staff are notified and claim the open shift from the app, subject to the manager's approval. Bank staff are on the same rota as everyone else, so agency is used only when the home's own team cannot cover. This is the £80k line.
“Since implementing Carecentre, we've saved over £500,000 annually on staffing by eliminating costly overspends caused by paper-based rota management. The system's real-time oversight and budget-linked permissions ensure every shift is properly staffed without exceeding budgets.”
In their own words
“Paper rotas chronically over-staffed the floor. Live attendance + budget-linked permissions eliminated overspend without dropping care ratios. The role-rendered rota with budget-linked permissions is the single mechanism I credit for the £280k of rota savings.”
“Payroll admin dropped from 10 hours to under 2 hours a week. Payroll errors are down 95%. The small leaks that compounded into a six-figure annual bill have stopped.”
“Agency was a Saturday reflex. Three months in, the internal roster covers the weekend. We go to agency on the genuinely hard shifts, not on every shift.”
What's next
The group continues to extend its use of Care Centre. Staff surveys and the pulse question run through CareSurvey™, anonymous to each home, with an AI report and an action plan written by the home. CareMaintenance™ is being introduced across the four homes, starting with each home's asset register, and policies are issued through CareHR with versioned acknowledgement in every home.
