Are You Getting Enough Value From Your Employee?
Posted on Tue, May 11, 2010
By Koleen Singerline
Often, as hiring managers, we calculate the cost of an employee based on salary and payroll burden, but we don't take into account the hidden costs that are attached to every employee we bring on board. Let's start with recruiting - whether we pay for an ad or put it as a free listing on Craig's List - deciding what to do and doing it takes time - usually OURS - and that's pretty valuable.
How much time and expense does your administrative staff expend to open, respond, and route resumes to the hiring team? How much time does your hiring team spend screening resumes - many of which have none of the skills you are looking for? How much time was spent scheduling interviews? How many staff members were involved in the interviews? How long per interview? How many interviews? What is the average cost of the interviewers' time? And the list goes on and on.
Eventually you reach a consensus of opinion and get the person on board - but if it doesn't go just right what do you do? Do you give them a chance? Do you let them go and start over? What is the cost of a "bad" hire?
Once we get our employee in place, we have to figure in the cost of lunch time, benefits, sick days, holidays, personal days and so on - that can sure add up. Don't forget the new taxes that our government adds on each year -like the increased unemployment tax to cover all those unemployed individuals that can now receive benefits for up to 92 weeks (yes, that is nearly two years).
When you add it all up, it can make sense to use a staffing agency to do all the recruiting and screening for you - and better yet, give you some time to see if the person fits into your team before you make that hiring decision. It's a sort of "try before you buy" process that takes some of the guess work out of the process.
Use our Cost Calculator to see the hidden costs of your employees.
See what a 30K employee really costs.