Are you familiar with the butterfly effect; a concept highlighting the possibility that small causes can have momentous effects? Bringing this theory into recruitment, this article outlines the many effects and hidden costs an empty seat can have on your business.

There is no magic formula for calculating the actual cost of an empty vacancy because the factors to consider are largely dependent on the position, industry and other circumstances. But there are hidden costs to consider:

1. The upscale time of a new hire is often forgotten about. The timeline from someone’s first day to them becoming valuable and working independently is generally speaking 3 months. This is obviously dependent on many other variables, but from our own experience that’s when everything seems to just click. As a result, the longer you wait to replace someone, the longer it will take before they start to add value.

2. For the remaining team members, taking over someone else’s responsibilities can impose stress, frustration, demotivation and burnout. You might think it’s sustainable for a short period of time, but ‘short-term’ tends to become ‘medium-term’ and before you know it, another employee has handed in their notice.

3. By not hiring a replacement before someone leaves, there is no time for a handover. For a new starter to only have written documents to refer to is far from ideal – and that is if everything was even written down in the first place! Not being able to ask questions or have a good induction can set someone back weeks, if not months.

4. The quality of work and productivity are likely to drop when a person is taking on responsibilities they are unfamiliar with. Not only do they need to take on someone’s workload, they have a lot less time to execute their own.The decrease in productivity even starts before an individual actually leaves the business. They are typically less invested, take their foot off the gas and might produce a poor handover.

5. Disruption in one department can have a cascading negative impact across other areas of your business. Missed deadlines and targets will ultimately impact the bottom line.

6. If a management role is vacant the team loses guidance and leadership which impacts productivity further. Replacing a key team member is also a much bigger challenge than the average employee.

7. When an employee leaves there are some things that go with them; experience and skills gets lost. Investments in training can’t be transferred, neither can business familiarity.

8. Opportunities are lost each day you have a vacant position, as that could have been someone contributing with new ideas, driving initiatives, or solving problems.

9. If you temporarily fill a gap with an interim or freelance employee, you will end up training someone twice for the same position. There is also a risk that their error rate is higher and productivity lower than for the average employee.

10. Not replacing someone due to hiring freezes or budget cuts can negatively impact team morale and job satisfaction of the rest of the team if they are understaffed and overworked. The team loses hope of things improving and motivation might be lost.

If you are tempted to cut your hiring budget or think a recruiting fee seems too steep, please take these hidden costs into account. It’s not as easy as ‘by not paying this salary for X months I’m saving X’. Not all costs are tangible and there is so much more to consider than the monetary value of someone’s salary.

Are you hiring and keen to avoid these costs? Feel free to contact us or reach me personally on jo@vertical-advantage.com to find out more about our expertise, services and how we can help.

‘Business as usual’ has been replaced by ‘adapt and support’ since the outbreak of COVID-19. We are in a rare situation that has affected every country, industry and individual to some extent, so one thing we have felt strongly about at Vertical Advantage is to help people where we can.

Here’s what we’ve done so far to adapt and why we’ve done it.

Proactively helping people who are out of work

Evidently a large chunk of the workforce has been made redundant or found themselves without a job for other reasons linked to the pandemic. Nearly two million people in the UK have applied for universal credit benefits since the beginning of lockdown – that’s six times the normal claimant rate(!).

Having a vast network of FMCG candidates and businesses during a crisis like this, we knew we had to utilise it to do our bit. Not for the sake of additional revenue or expecting something in return, but because it was simply the right thing to do.

Consequently, we have offered to add active job seekers within ecommerce & digital and sales & marketing to open source spreadsheets. These have been shared directly with relevant clients and on LinkedIn.

Click here to access the ecommerce & digital list.

…and here to access the sales & marketing list.

We have also offered candidates the chance to book in time directly into our calendars for them to ask questions, get advice on their job search, or just to have an informal chat about the current job market.

Helpful insights

New working conditions and a shook FMCG and consumer goods market has surfaced questions by candidates and businesses alike, which is why we have posted regular updates on our website and social channels to provide our expertise to share information and provide support.

We’ve taken the pulse on the sector by speaking with clients regularly and outlined what hiring and onboarding has looked like during the pandemic, but also shared articles like how to identify company culture via video call, how to stay engaged with your team and our best bits of advice for current job seekers.

In addition, many businesses in the consumer goods sector have shared interesting market insights with us, which we have proactively shared with our key clients. If you are interested in finding out what these are, please email me on david@vertical-advantage.com.

When we say live jobs, we mean LIVE jobs

Since the early stages of lockdown we have noticed a lot of frustration coming from candidates as they were applying to vacancies online that they came to realise didn’t exist or were in fact put on indefinite hold – something that provided false hope and was a huge time waster. This was and is a big issue and something we didn’t want to contribute to, so the first thing we did when the job market took a downturn was to audit thew jobs we advertised.

You will also see that jobs on our website are advertised differently:

1. Some of our clients are pipelining for hires they want to make in the medium term. These ads include ‘Talent Pipeline’ in their titles for clarity.

2. All other ads are for LIVE jobs that we are currently recruiting for.

What next?

Although the consumer space hasn’t been as hit badly as many others, we recognise that some businesses simply don’t have the budget to use a recruitment agency at the moment. And that’s ok.

We want to continue to help all clients in the industry where we can, whether this means helping you find talent for a particular vacancy, providing advice on the current market, or benchmarking your strategy against others.

Feel free to drop me an email on david@vertical-advantage.com or call me on 07792 544887 if there is anything you’d like to discuss. I’d be delighted to hear from you.