Why The Clock Change Actually Matters For Your Business

The clocks go back on 25 October 2026 at 2 am, and the knock-on effects on your business shouldn't be slept on. It's easy to dismiss daylight saving as nothing more than an extra hour of sleep in October, and one less in March, but actually, there can be a real business impact. We'll walk you through exactly how the hour change ripples through your operations, and the steps you should take to make the transition a smooth one.

The impact beyond the extra hour

When the clocks go back, evenings get dark much earlier, often by 4-5 pm (shock and horror), depending on how far north you are. Retailers commonly report lower footfall after dark during this period, while hospitality venues tend to see the opposite effect, benefiting as people head indoors earlier rather than continuing to browse the high street. In other words, the same hour of darkness can be bad news for one kind of business and good news for another, right next door to each other. The trick is in being prepared.

Let’s take a moment to discuss the safety aspect of earlier nightfall as well. Analysis of police data over a six-year period found an average of 278 more personal injury collisions in the two weeks after the clocks went back, compared to the fortnight before, largely down to drivers and pedestrians adjusting to sudden evening darkness. The same piece also cites insurance data linking the clock change to a rise in burglaries, with incidents reportedly spiking by more than a third as evenings draw in. So if your business, or your staff's commute, involves being out after dark, this is a good time to start reassessing closing procedures and communicating safety measures to your staff and colleagues.

Adjusting your hours around the shift

Here’s some good news though: you don’t have to completely change your working hours just because of this time shift, but you will have to account for the change in your customers’ habits by reviewing whether they still make sense for the upcoming season.

Review your closing time in late autumn: If your business relies on passing footfall (a shop on a high street, for instance), a 6 pm close might have made sense when it was still light outside in September, but once it's been dark since 4:30 pm, you might feel the change. If you consistently notice reduced footfall, consider whether closing slightly earlier (saving on staffing and energy costs for quiet hours) or adjusting your shift patterns to match the new rhythm of the day makes more sense. 

Update your hours everywhere customers actually see them: If you do shift your closing time, it's not just your staff who need to know; your Google Business listing, website, and social media all need updating too, otherwise you'll have customers turning up to find you've already shut.

For hospitality, lean into the shift rather than fight it: Don’t give up just because it feels like the days are shorter; instead, view the change that people are heading indoors earlier as an important opportunity. This might mean that your evening rush starts earlier, and the trick here is to be prepared. Get your staffing sorted and offer a few mid-week deals or events to pull people in even more. 

In spring, expect the reverse: When the clocks go forward and evenings suddenly get lighter, retail footfall after work tends to pick back up as people linger outdoors longer, while some hospitality venues may see their earliest evening rush soften as customers stay out longer before coming in. So, be ready to readjust accordingly!

The obvious one: set your alarms and clocks: Your phone will sort itself out, but the oven, the till, the CCTV box gathering dust in the back office- these might not be quite so clever. If you run a bakery or anything with early starts, make sure every staff member actually knows about the change too; there's nothing worse than someone showing up an hour early (or late) because nobody mentioned it! 

How to get your rotas right

But really, there's more to it than just setting your watch right, as important as it is. Here's where it really bites: not your opening hours, but whether your staff are actually there when your customers are. Here are a few ways to get this right:

Shift your rota in stages, not all at once: Rather than rewriting the whole schedule the day the clocks change, try nudging your peak shift window by 30-60 minutes for the first week or two and see how it works with footfall. After all, customer habits don't flip overnight either, but that doesn’t mean you have all the time in the world to catch up.

Keep an eye on overtime and understaffing costs, not just the obvious gaps: It's easy to focus on the hour that's now dead quiet, but the flip side matters just as much: if your new peak period isn't covered properly, you'll end up either paying out unplanned overtime to patch the gap, or losing sales to slow service during exactly the window you should be capitalising on.

Check your notice obligations before shifting anyone's hours: If you're changing a staff member's contracted shift times, particularly for part-time or zero-hours staff, it's worth checking what notice you're required to give under their contract before you make it official.

Don't assume last month's rota still works: A rota built around September's footfall patterns can leave you overstaffed during a now-quiet 5-6 pm slot, and understaffed during a newly busy 4-5 pm one. It's worth actually reviewing your sales data from the two weeks either side of a clock change, rather than relying on gut feeling about when things "normally" get busy. Remember, a clock change shifts your entire day, so it’s only fitting you can consider a shift in your rota. 

If you're a bit tired of this twice-yearly scramble, and managing seasonal shifts in demand feels like a recurring headache, our guide on managing a peak-trading season when staffing your business is a great read on how to build a flexible rota. 

Track your footfall properly (without guessing)

The single biggest mistake businesses make isn't getting the hours or rotas wrong on day one. It’s actually not noticing the shift at all, or not until weeks later, by which point you’ve already lost valuable trade because the schedule is out of whack with reality. While it’s an easy mistake to make, it can also be an easy win if you get it all right from the very start. 

This is where a POS system with proper sales reporting comes in and takes the guesswork and uncertainty out entirely. Rather than relying on a vague sense that "it felt quieter after 5 pm this week," you can look at exactly when your transactions actually happened, hour by hour, and compare it directly against the same period before the clock change. With this type of information easily accessible, you can react to a shift within days, rather than months.

This matters just as much wherever you're trading; most of Europe currently observes the same broad daylight saving pattern (clocks forward in spring, back in autumn), even though the exact dates and the political future of the practice vary by region. In fact, the EU has discussed scrapping the clock change entirely in recent years, though no final agreement has been reached, so for now, this is a genuinely recurring planning moment worth building into your calendar twice a year, rather than treating it as a one-off surprise each time it rolls around.

Make the clock change work for you, not against you

In business, every hour counts, and the clocks changing isn't just a minor inconvenience to shrug off; it genuinely shifts all your patterns: rotas, customer flow, and how safe your evening operations are. Businesses that take all this in their stride and make deliberate changes, by actually checking the real data rather than guessing, tend to come out of each clock change in much better shape than those who go about business as usual.

That last part is really the crux of it: the businesses that get this right aren't the ones with some special insight into the weather or their customers' habits; they're the ones who take the time to actually look at their own sales data. To make this even easier, Epos Now's reporting suite includes an hourly sales trend report built for exactly this: spotting the shift in your own numbers rather than guessing at it, so if you've never dug into that part of your system, the clock change is as good a reason as any to start.