What does a hire cost?

Job ads, social ads, your dispatchers' hours, onboarding, and the days on which the new hire is already on the payroll but with nobody yet. Plus the people who leave again after eight weeks. No sign-up. The link is the calculation.

One hire, five items

Four of them appear on an invoice. The fifth appears nowhere and is usually the biggest anyway: the bench days until the first assignment. Wages and overhead run from day one.¹

What a hire costs

Job ads and job boards €

per hire

Social ads and portals €

per hire

Dispatcher hours h

Screening, interviews, contract

Internal hourly rate €/h

Full cost per dispatcher hour

Onboarding €

Clothing, check-up, induction

Bench days until assignment days

Working days between contract and first client

Job ads and job boards 15.4 %: €400
Social ads and portals 9.6 %: €250
Dispatcher's time 20.8 %: €540
Onboarding 13.5 %: €350
Idle time until the first assignment 40.7 %: €1,056.46
Cost per hire: €2,596.46
Per employee who stays²: €3,461.95

Per year, and per person who stays

The hire who leaves after eight weeks is not lost: they have to be replaced, and the replacement can leave again. That is why an employee who stays costs more than one hire.²

Your year

Hires per year heads

Everyone who newly joins the payroll in the year.

Early turnover %

Share who leave again in the first three months.

Cost per hire: €2,596.46
Cost per year: €155,787.59
of which for early turnover: €38,946.90
of which for bench days: €63,387.59
Employees who stay: 45
Per employee who stays: €3,461.95

Job ads and job boards
Social ads and portals
Dispatcher's time
Onboarding
Idle time until the first assignment
Markup for early turnover

Composition in €, both bars on the same axis

The difference is the markup for early turnover: €865.49 per hire.

25 % early turnover costs you €38,946.90 a year, out of €155,787.59 for 60 hires, of whom 45 stay. Five points less would be €7,789.38.³

The lever on turnover: Every point less early turnover is worth €1,557.88 a year.
The lever on idle time: A bench day before the first assignment costs €211.29, over the year €63,387.59.
The lever on dispatcher time: One hour less per hire saves €2,700 a year.

Adjust assumptions

They carry the one item that is not on an invoice: the bench day. They are the same keys as in the assignment calculator, so a link from there brings its assumptions along.⁴

Avg. gross wage per hour €/h

Payroll on-costs %

Weekly hours h

Overhead per month €

This means: a bench day costs €211.29, and the 5 days until the first assignment come to €1,056.46 per hire.

alluvo knows the day the contract starts and the day the first assignment begins. Nobody has to estimate the gap between them.

See the product Get to know alluvo

Footnotes

How it is calculated per hire: job ads + social ads + (hours × internal hourly rate) + onboarding + (bench days × cost per day). A bench day costs weekly hours / 5 × gross wage × (1 + on-costs) + overhead / 21.75. It works in working days, 261 a year and 21.75 a month. Wages, on-costs and overhead run from day one, even before the employee is at a client. ↩
Early turnover: divided, not multiplied. Whoever leaves in the first months leaves a vacancy that has to be filled again, and the replacement can leave again. The chain is geometric (1 + f + f² + …), and its sum is 1 / (1 − f). At 25% an employee who stays therefore costs four thirds of a hire. This assumes that every replacement costs the same as the first. ↩
What this calculator cannot do: bonuses to referrers and employees, finder's fees to recruitment consultancies, travel and relocation costs, language courses and recognition procedures, shares of general overhead beyond the overhead per employee, and the revenue lost while the position at the client is open. ↩
The presets are approximations common in the industry, not collective-agreement values or market prices; if you know your own, enter them. A back-of-the-envelope calculation for a conversation, not tax or legal advice. ↩