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The Hidden Drain: Over 700 hours lost before you even go wrong in hiring.
- Helen
- Jul 14
- 4 min read
When an employee departs, the clock starts ticking on a cascade of hidden costs that can severely impact your business. Beyond the immediate recruitment fees, the true drain lies in lost productivity, diverted resources, and the lengthy ramp-up time for a new hire. Let's break down the hours your business could be losing, potentially reaching into the hundreds, and significantly impacting your bottom line. Maybe you think of all of these, maybe you don’t.
1. The immediate productivity gap
The moment an employee leaves, a significant vacuum is created. Projects can stall, team direction may falter, and critical decisions can be delayed. (Don’t get me started on Succession planning here, that’s a separate conversation!) Existing team members often have to absorb additional responsibilities, leading to increased workload, stress, and potential burnout.
Lost Productivity of the Vacant Role: While challenging to quantify precisely in hours without specific role details, studies indicate that unfilled positions significantly impact productivity, morale, and overall success.
Time Diverted from Remaining team: When existing employees absorb their departed colleagues responsibilities, their own core responsibilities can suffer, leading to decreased efficiency and delayed projects. Conservatively, if team members spend an average of 1-2 hours per day covering the gap, across a team of 5-10 people for just the vacancy period, these hours accumulate.
2. The Recruitment Black Hole: Time spent finding a replacement
Finding the right person is rarely a quick process, no matter what the market is like. It involves multiple stages, each consuming valuable hours from various stakeholders across your business.
Average Time to Fill: The overall "time to fill" for roles can vary significantly, ranging from 18-50+ days or more from application to offer acceptance. However, the total time to fill (from job opening to a new hire's start date) is often much longer due to notice periods, commonly extending to 6 months for most positions.
Hiring Manager's Time: You, Yes, you. You invest substantial amounts of time, including:
Creating comprehensive job descriptions and posting: (e.g., 5-10 hours)
Thoroughly screening CVs: Reviewing hundreds of applications, even if each takes just 5 minutes, can quickly accumulate over 8 hours for 100 applications. (EVEN with Tech enabling you)
Conducting interviews: Multiple rounds involving the hiring manager and other key stakeholders. For a mid-level role, this could involve 3-5 candidates across 2-3 rounds, each lasting 1-2 hours. (e.g., 20-40 hours for the interviewing team)
Facilitating feedback sessions and making final decisions: (e.g., 5-10 hours)
HR/Recruitment Team's Time: This team dedicates considerable effort to sourcing, initial screening, scheduling, offer management, background checks, and onboarding coordination. Even with an efficient process, this can easily represent 40-80+ hours of dedicated effort.
3. The Onboarding and Upskilling Investment
Bringing a new employee on board is just the beginning. They require dedicated time to fully understand the company culture, processes, team dynamics, and specific responsibilities to become fully productive and integrated.
Time to reach full productivity: A new hire typically takes a significant period (often around eight months) to achieve full productivity within their new environment. While formal onboarding might be shorter (e.g. 3 months), the full ramp-up period is considerably longer.
Formal onboarding programs: While some companies may only dedicate a week, HR and hiring managers generally agree that effective onboarding for managers should span at least three to six months, or even up to a year for senior leadership roles.
Training and coaching: Existing leaders will dedicate valuable hours to mentoring, guiding, and training the new employee. This may include:
Regular weekly check-ins: (e.g., 1 hour/week for 6 months = 24 hours)
Specific project briefings and guidance: (e.g., 10-20 hours)
Introducing them to key stakeholders: (e.g., 5-10 hours)
New employees learning curve: The new employee themselves will be investing significant hours in learning and adapting. During this ramp-up phase, their output will naturally be lower than that of a fully effective predecessor.
Putting it into Perspective:
Let's attempt an average calculation for a mid level employee. acknowledging that these figures can vary widely by industry, company, and role complexity:
Gap in Productivity (Estimated): If a role is vacant for 2 months before a new hire starts, and their role contributes approximately 40 hours/week, that's 320 hours of direct role productivity loss. Adding 2 hours/week of redistributed work across 5 team members for those 8 weeks equates to 80 hours of indirect team productivity loss (Total = 400 hours)
Recruitment Time (Estimated):
Hiring Manager: 40 hours
HR/Recruitment: 60 hours
(Total = 100 hours)
Onboarding & Upskilling (Estimated
lost productivity of new employee + mentor time):
If a new employee takes 6 months to reach 80% productivity, that's a 20% loss over 24 weeks. (20% of 40 hours/week x 24 weeks) = 192 hours of lost productivity from the new hire.
Mentor/Leader time (e.g., 1 hour/week for 6 months) = 24 hours.
(Total = 216 hours)
Conservative Total Estimated Lost Hours: ~716 hours (400 + 100 + 216)
This calculation, while simplified, clearly illustrates how easily hundreds of hours can be lost when a managerial position becomes vacant. When you consider that some roles can take much longer to fill, and the new hire's full productivity might not be achieved for a year or more, the figure of 835 hours (or even higher) becomes entirely plausible, representing a significant drain on resources and momentum.
By understanding these hidden hourly costs, businesses can better appreciate the strategic value of proactive talent management and retention, and the critical importance of a streamlined, effective recruitment and onboarding process.
The good news? Technology and AI are rapidly evolving to mitigate many of these challenges but where do you start?
Every business is different, from automating initial candidate screening and interview scheduling to leveraging predictive analytics for better talent matching, the right tools can significantly reduce the "time to fill" and improve the quality of hire. Along with the improved candidate experience if done right.
However, implementing these solutions effectively requires strategic insight and a deep understanding of your unique business context. The "best" technology isn't always the most expensive; it's the one that aligns perfectly with your specific needs and goals.
Curious how we can help your business thrive? We'd love to have an informal chat. Simply contact us to arrange a convenient time.
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