Cost of a bad hirecalculator.
Add up what a hire that didn’t work out cost you, from your own figures: recruiting, pay while they weren’t productive, onboarding, manager time and rehiring. Free, no sign-up, and nothing you type is stored or sent to us.
Example figures: replace them with yours
Shows the total as a multiple of salary, and works out the pay below.
Before they left, or so far.
Your estimate, on average. At 40%, the other 60% of their pay bought nothing back.
Add detailCurrency, on-costs, recruiting and onboarding, manager and team time, rehiring, and what leaving earlier would have saved.
Pay while they weren’t productive
How to count it
Benefits, employer taxes and pension as a percentage of salary, from your own payroll. Leave it blank to count salary alone.
The working
- Monthly salary: $60,000 ÷ 12$5,000
- With on-costs of 0%$5,000
- Over 6 months$30,000
- Not productive for 50% of it$15,000
Hiring them
Adverts, agency fees, assessments and the time spent interviewing. The cost per hire calculator can work this out.
Opens the cost per hire calculator in the same currency.
Courses, equipment, licences and the time of the people who trained them.
While they were in the role
Hours spent supervising, correcting work, covering for them and managing the exit.
Anything else you can put a figure on, such as severance, notice pay or work that had to be redone.
Team disruption
Time colleagues lost to rework, covering gaps or extra handovers. Leave it blank if you counted it under manager and team time.
Replacing them
What it cost, or will cost, to recruit the replacement.
The cost of waiting
Optional. Compare with the same hire leaving earlier, for example at the end of probation. Leave it blank to skip.
Result
Cost of this bad hire
$15,000
0.25× the annual salary you entered
In this example, 6 months at 50% productivity means $15,000 of pay bought no work back.
| Pay and benefits while not productive | $15,000 |
| Total | $15,000 |
A sum of your own figures. No averages or percentages are added. Not counted yet: recruiting the hire, onboarding and training, rehiring for the role. Add them under “Add detail”.
In plain English
This bad hire cost us $15,000, 0.25× the annual salary of $60,000. All of it was pay and benefits while not productive. They were in the role for 6 months at an estimated 50% of full productivity. Every figure comes from our own records and estimates, with no industry averages added.
The link holds your figures, so anyone with it sees them.
Prevent the next one
Score every candidate against the same criteria.
The same questions for every candidate, with what a good answer looks like.
The formula
What does a bad hire cost?
The cost of a bad hire is everything you spent on a hire that didn’t work out, plus what it costs to replace them: recruiting them, the pay and benefits for the time they weren’t productive, onboarding and training, the extra time their manager and team spent, any exit costs, and recruiting again.
Formula
Cost of a bad hire = recruiting + pay while not productive + onboarding and training + manager and team time + team disruption + other costs + rehiring
Manager and team time = extra hours × the hourly cost of that time. Team disruption = colleagues affected × hours each lost × their hourly cost. Pay while not productive, if you work it out = salary ÷ 12 × (1 + on-costs %) × months × (100% − productivity %).
This calculator adds up only the figures you enter. It applies no percentage of salary and no industry average: published estimates vary widely with how they were measured, and your own figures are the ones that apply to your hiring.
What to count
Count what you can measure.
- Start with the money you can find in your own records: agency invoices, payroll, training bills, severance.
- Price time at a loaded hourly cost (pay plus benefits and employer taxes), not pay alone.
- List separately what you can’t put a reliable figure on, such as lost customers, missed deadlines or the effect on the team. Leaving it out of the total keeps the number defensible.
- Use the total to judge what a better screening step is worth. If one avoided bad hire pays for it, the case is made.
Questions
About the cost of a bad hire.
What counts as a bad hire?
Why doesn’t the calculator use an industry average?
How do I work out the pay while they weren’t productive?
How can I avoid bad hires?
Does this tool store what I type?
Related: offer letter template, cost per hire calculator, interview kit builder, the cost of a bad hire and quality of hire.
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