Managing costs is an essential part of any successful business and for many a large expense is in employing people. When thinking about your employee costs, things like wages, benefits, training and recruiting probably spring to mind. But there are hidden costs  that offer you the chance to make huge savings without even realising how.

You can save money on hiring before an employee walks through the door. And we don’t mean offering a below market-rate pay deal. We’re talking about onboarding – the period between hiring and getting an employee started working for your business. Onboarding starts from the moment the role has been offered and represents a crucial period where you could make real business savings.

Cut out hidden recruitment costs

In addition to traditional recruitment costs including advertising and agency fees, research by webonboarding has shown that onboarding costs, on average, an additional £195 per hire.

Even if recruitment is in relatively small numbers each year, these costs soon mount up. And for businesses who need to recruit large numbers of employees on seasonal, temporary and fixed term contracts, the costs are multiplied many times over.

Companies that need large numbers of recruits on a seasonal basis can often suffer an amplified rate of candidate drop out during the onboarding process. This is due to the nature of their market, for example hospitality and leisure industries that recruit students during holiday periods often lose workers to offers from rival companies.

Having candidates drop out during the onboarding process, doesn’t just affect recruitment plans, but also affects your business costs, as time and resources have already been spent getting to this stage.

Here’s an example of the hidden costs your business could be saving:

We spoke to a company in the leisure industry who recruit approximately  3,000 seasonal employees each year.

On top of recruitment costs, they are looking at an onboarding cost of £585k.

3,000 x £195 = £585k

In addition, they have a further 1,000 candidates who drop out of the process, adding a further £195k to their costs.

1,000 x £195 = £195k

So, the total hidden cost for recruitment for this company is £780k every year.

£585k + £195k = £780k.

There’s the potential for this business to save more than three quarters of a million pounds a year by automating its onboarding process with webonboarding.

The cost of offers going to waste

It takes the same amount of time and effort to make an offer that turns into an employee as it does to make an offer that doesn’t. Making sure that you can convert 100% of your offers into productive workers, and doing it as efficiently as possible can be a great time and cost saving to your business.

Most businesses accept recruitment costs on the basis that they will recoup any investment by attracting good talent. But according to webonboarding research, 27% of people who leave a new job in the first year do so within their induction period.  That hardly gives firms time to benefit from investing in a new employee.

Companies that streamline and manage the onboarding process efficiently can avoid some of these unnecessary costs.

Save money before new hires start working for you

Traditional onboarding can be very inefficient. Issuing and exchanging paper-based documentation is a resource hungry exercise. HR professionals say they spend 24% of their time on the onboarding process. That’s almost a quarter of a resource being directed at people who aren’t even working for your business yet.

In today’s job market, candidates expect to be able to communicate with future employers from application through to joining the business. And doing so effectively can mean the difference between a great new employee coming onboard or choosing to join a competitor.

Save with onboarding technology

It’s clear there are savings to be made by reviewing and managing your employee onboarding process more efficiently with technology.

This is particularly important in attracting employees who have grown up in the world of email and the Internet. These days, just about everyone expects to be able to communicate, quickly, easily and digitally, so using online systems is both practical and familiar.

Three ways that investing in onboarding technology can save you money:

• Save on HR team time and resources – reduce the time and effort it takes to issue contracts and get a new employee onboard.
• Save on additional and repeated recruitment costs – avoid the risk of losing employees during the hiring process.
• Save on productivity by cutting the time it takes to for a new employee to work effectively for your business.

Webonboarding, onboarding technology can help you streamline and manage the process of turning recruitment offers into productive employees. And in doing so it can make a real difference to your business’ bottom line. Cutting recruitment costs, reducing candidate dropouts and making more efficient use of your HR resources could mean significant cost savings for your business.

Isn’t it time you looked at onboarding and digital technology that can help you manage new employees more efficiently?