Ask any Operations Director or HR Manager what they spend on recruitment, and they'll mention agency fees. But this is only a small part of the real cost of recruitment in your business.
In reality, the invoice is just the tip of an iceberg. Under the surface is a collection of costs that quietly drain productivity, inflate payroll, and slow your business down. There are costs that most businesses never track, and therefore never question.
If you're running a logistics or manufacturing operation, here's what you're likely missing.
The Hidden Time Tax
When a vacancy opens, who deals with it? Usually, a line manager, an operations lead, or a stretched HR generalist. They post the job, pre-screen CVs, coordinate interviews, chase agencies, and onboard whoever joins. None of that time is free.
The average cost per hire in the UK at £6,125, but that figure includes only direct costs. When you factor in the management hours diverted from operations, the number climbs considerably. For high-volume roles, multiply that across ten, twenty, or fifty hires a year. The time tax alone can run into six figures.
The Vacancy Gap
Every unfilled role costs money. In logistics and manufacturing, empty forces overtime and stress on your team, accelerating turnover.
Industry estimates suggest the productivity cost of a vacant role runs at 33% of that position's annual salary per month. For a warehouse operative on £28,000, that's over £900 per month in lost output. That’s before you've spent a penny on recruitment.
Attrition: The Cost That Keeps Coming Back
Staff turnover is expensive. It costs businesses an average of £30,614 per employee. For a site of 200 people with 30% annual turnover, that's over £1.8 million per year cycling through your business, which largely goes unnoticed.
Most companies treat turnover as inevitable. But reactive hiring drives it. When recruitment is reactive, rushed, and misaligned with your culture, you hire people who leave quickly. And then you pay to replace them. Again.
The Fix Isn't Spending Less It's Spending Smarter
The businesses beginning to crack this aren't necessarily spending less on recruitment. They're spending more predictably. Subscription-based recruitment models are gaining traction in logistics and manufacturing precisely because they replace unpredictable agency fees with fixed, plannable costs and because they bring a dedicated resource that understands your operation.
The first step is simply knowing your numbers. Calculate your current cost per hire, your time-to-fill, and your first-year attrition rate. Most businesses are surprised and then motivated by what they find.
Want to know what you're really spending? ACS Smart Sourcing offers a free cost audit for logistics and manufacturing businesses. Get in touch to find out more.
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