Digital Onboarding – 60% cost savings

Digital onboarding offers massive potential for savings in the training process. In this article, we show you how you can save up to 60% in costs through innovative technologies.

What does it cost to bring a new team member into the company?

On average, it costs between €3,500 and €20,000 to onboard a new employee. Yes, that is a wide range. However, the costs of a new hire depend on the industry, specialization, company size, and geographical location.

Therefore, it is difficult to set a "flat rate" for a new hire. It is clear, however, that this is an investment. Therefore, it is important that the investment pays off in the end. The chances of a worthwhile investment increase if costs can be optimized.

Allow us to ask a question: How much money are you spending unnecessarily on onboarding? E-learning technologies are now actually available to every company, even micro-enterprises. They drastically reduce the costs for onboarding.

Depending on the optimization potential, e-learning for employees can save up to 60% of onboarding costs. But which costs must be taken into account when onboarding a new employee?

Onboarding costs: The 4 biggest cost factors

The introduction of new employees is associated with significant costs. These vary in amount depending on the company. In principle, however, there are 4 cost factors in onboarding that play a role in every company.

Recruitment costs

Recruitment costs are understood to be all costs incurred before the hiring of the new employee. These can include the following expenses:

• Costs for job advertisements
• Recruiters
• Applicant management systems
• Internal HR resources

In German-speaking countries, recruitment costs average between €1,000 and €2,000 per recruitment.

Onboarding and training

Onboarding and training costs are understood to be all costs incurred during the time until the new hire is fully trained and productive. These costs include:

• Costs for training programs (internal and external)
• Rental of training rooms
• Trainer costs
• Personnel costs for employees who train new hires

The costs for onboarding and training vary primarily depending on the complexity of the job. On average, they can range from €500 to more than €10,000.

Loss of productivity

One of the biggest factors is the loss of productivity. An employee who is not yet fully trained costs money. They consume company resources (personnel costs, office costs, energy costs, software costs, etc.) without generating revenue for the company.

This is normal and cannot be entirely prevented. However: The longer the training phase lasts, the higher the costs of lost productivity. On average, this amounts to several thousand euros.

Administrative costs

Every new hire is associated with administrative tasks, such as:

• Setting up and managing contracts
• Setting up IT access
• Office equipment
• Instruction in compliance matters
• Documentation and personnel files

Although administrative tasks account for the smallest relative expenditure, they still offer potential for savings. The less administrative effort per new hire, the cheaper it is. As a rule, administrative costs in onboarding amount to between €100 and €1,500 per onboarding.

Digital onboarding: Reducing costs

Digital onboarding offers enormous potential for savings. Through the scalability of the learning offer, costs are massively reduced. This is because e-learning offers drastically reduce the need for 1:1 training and face-to-face training. Supervisors and colleagues are not kept from their operational business to the usual extent by new hires.

Reduce training costs

Digital training can be accessed anytime and from anywhere. As a result, face-to-face training is no longer necessary.

With on-demand content such as webinars, videos, and interactive modules, new employees learn at their own pace, which significantly reduces training costs.

Studies show that digital training reduces the costs of in-person training by up to 50%.

Reusable content

Instead of creating new materials every time or hiring expensive external trainers, companies centralize their training content and make it reusable. This way, multiple generations of new employees use training content instead of starting from scratch every time.

Faster onboarding

Digital onboarding tools enable a structured and well-organized onboarding. By using digital checklists, automated tasks, and clear learning paths, new employees can become productive faster.

Studies have shown that digital onboarding shortens the time to full productivity by up to 30%. This brings significant savings in the costs of lost productivity.

Reduction of administrative costs

Digital onboarding systems automate many administrative tasks that previously had to be done manually. This includes creating and managing contracts, setting up IT access, and managing documents.

Automation reduces the time required and the susceptibility to errors, which leads to lower administrative costs. On average, companies can reduce their administrative costs by about 20-40% through automation.

Even compliance training and values training can be handled 100% digitally. These can even be completed before the official start of the job, which further reduces the loss of productivity.

Digital onboarding for your company

We allow ourselves to repeat the question we asked at the beginning of the article: How much money are you spending unnecessarily on onboarding?

Our experts will show you how to efficiently offer digital onboarding in your company and thus save valuable resources.

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