It’s a great day: you’re about to hire a new employee. Not only do you have a great feeling about Jasmine, but the stats back her up, and she’s happy to start working with you. But before you pop the champagne, let’s talk about the elephant in the room: remote onboarding costs.
Now, we all know that getting remote onboarding right is paramount. It’s the first step towards employee engagement. Why is employee engagement so important? Well, Gallup estimates that “low engagement costs the global economy US$8.9 trillion, or 9% of global GDP.”
So, remote onboarding is worth getting right. But what does it cost? One of the biggest expenses is the total amount to simply equip the new hire with the right IT gear. And spoiler alert: it’s not cheap.
So back to Jasmine. Exactly how much will this process cost us? Well, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer, but we can get a pretty good idea. Many factors come into play. The cost includes the price of laptops, how many hours company stakeholders spend on onboarding, and even the downtime of your new hire.
We’ll break it down step by step, using Jasmine as our example.
The Formula for Remote Onboarding Costs
Remote onboarding is like a recipe with a bunch of ingredients (costs and factors). Mix them wrong, and you’ll end up with a mess (a frustrated employee and a drained budget).
Let’s unpack each ingredient.
1. Costs of Administrative, Operations, and Training Tasks
First up are tasks that commonly make up the direct costs of onboarding. This is where your HR, IT, and operations teams shine (or groan, depending on how many coffees they’ve had).
- HR’s time: Orientation schedules, documents, contracts, and query responses for your new hire.
- IT’s time: They’ll set up the accounts, hardware, and software. On top of that, they’ll manage any troubleshooting, should there be (we hope not) issues. IT staff is also tasked with logistics like electronic shipping and asset tracking.
- Operations’ time: Your managers, team leaders, and tenured members will train their newest members through live training sessions, material creation, and feedback.
Let’s put a number on this. Say your HR team spends 10 hours, IT spends 5 hours, and operations spends 3 hours. If the average hourly wage for these roles is $30, $40, and $50, respectively, and an employee can cost 20% to 100% more than their base hourly wage—let’s say 40% for good measure—here’s the math:
Cost for HR: = 10 hours x $30 = $300
Cost for your IT department = 5 hours x $40 = $200
Cost for the ops team = 3 hours x $50 = $150
Total administrative costs = $300 + $200 + $150 = $650
And that’s just for one employee. Just scale this up for 10 members. Yikes.
2. IT Asset Management
Next, you’ll deal with IT asset management (ITAM), which usually involves:
- Procurement: Purchases for the laptop, monitor, keyboard, and other gear.
- Warehousing: Storing the equipment until it’s needed.
- Delivery: Shipping everything to your new hire’s location.
- Software: Tools and programs your new hire needs.
If you’re equipping your employee with a mid-range laptop ($1,200), a monitor ($300), a software package (up to $50 per month; $300 annually), and peripherals ($200), as well as dealing with shipping costs which might add another $150 to $200 or up to $500 internationally. This is if things run smoothly, and devices don’t get stuck in customs, arrive damaged, arrive late (causing downtime and disengagement), or any other potential mishaps.
ITAM Cost = $1,200 + $300 + $300 + $200 + $200 = $2,200
That’s quite a lot (but generally less than leasing). So you can imagine how costly mistakes in remote onboarding can be, and they’re more common when your IT team is stretched to the limit.
3. Lost Productivity Time
Here’s the catch. Even if your IT hardware arrives on time, your new employee isn’t fully productive during onboarding. They’re learning the ropes, setting up their workspace, and maybe figuring out how to install everything on their laptop without calling IT. And they’re much less productive if there’s a problem with their remote onboarding. And without the right gear, they’re over 100% less productive (because it also takes productivity away from the rest of the team).
If your new hire earns a good $50 per hour, and their onboarding tasks eat up 20 hours of their first work week…
Unproductive time cost = 20 hours x $50 = $1,000
We’re Just Getting Started
Plug these numbers into our formula: That’s $650 for admin, ops, and training tasks, $2,200 for ITAM, and a whopping $1,000 lost due to unproductive time. You’re spending $3,850 on that top-notch employee.
Wait, There’s More?
The final sum doesn’t end with $3,850—no surprise there. Consider taking note of the following aspects to help you have a more accurate result:
- Business size: A company with fewer people will spend more resources on remote onboarding.
- Employee location: Depending on the country they’re located in, the shipping costs may get high!
- Asset prices: Whether you’re eyeing high-end devices or not, the market can be unpredictable.
- Onboarding hours: New hires and other stakeholders may spend more time on the actual onboarding, so you may have to multiply the hours (don’t forget to do so for the costs). Even on the reasonable end, something unexpected is likely to push up your remote onboarding costs by around 10%. That takes us to a grand estimate of $4,235 per employee.
So, can we manage Jasmine’s remote onboarding a little cheaper? Some costs are unavoidable, and must be seen as an investment, but other expenses are just, well, unnecessary.
Dots: Your Onboarding Autopilot
Now, what if we told you that we could slash the costs for onboarding Jasmine? Well, meet Dots, the remote onboarding solution that takes the headache out of IT logistics. We:
- Cut ITAM costs: Our platform can take care of IT purchasing, storage, and delivery. Save on IT procurement with our multi-vendor platform, and save on remote onboarding, offboarding, and deliveries with Dots Credits.
- Save time: Company stakeholders should focus on training, culture and team building, and documents, and worry less about logistics. Cut hours of IT and HR time by choosing an all-in-one ITAM platform where you can order entire, customized kits with just a few clicks.
- Boost productivity: It’s in your best interests that your new hire has their gear on time. You’ll see a faster ROI on your new hires if they’re up, running, and satisfied with the company from day one.
You’ve already got a stellar HR team, an excellent IT department, and maybe even some AI-powered onboarding tools. Care to subtract the hassle? Make use of an autopilot for logistics and choose Dots.
Here’s to Simplified Remote Onboarding
Onboarding remote employees doesn’t have to be a budget-draining, time-sucking ordeal. We’re here to automate the logistics. That means you’ll have most of your time spent on what matters most in remote onboarding: helping your new hire shine and enjoying a boost in ROI for all your recruitment efforts.
Book a demo with Dots and you’ll see just how much you can save on resources. Because why waste time on the boring stuff when automation can handle it for you?
