Vacant roles cost firms USD $14,700 a month: survey

Connext Global has published research estimating that a single unfilled critical role costs organisations $14,700 a month. The findings are based on a survey of 750 US employees involved in hiring decisions or budget oversight.

The report examined how long companies leave important roles vacant, the operational problems that emerge when work is redistributed, and how employers weigh the cost of a delayed hire against the risk of appointing the wrong person.

Among respondents, 15% said they did not know what their unfilled positions were costing each month. Many employers were also not measuring the effects of vacancies directly: 33% said they calculate lost productivity, while 35% track overtime linked to an open role.

In many cases, the operational effects appeared quickly. Some 22% of leaders said an open role hurts team performance within the first two weeks, while 39% said the impact is felt after about a month. Even so, 37% said their longest vacancy in the past year lasted at least three months.

Managers and senior staff often end up filling the gap themselves. The survey found that 47% of respondents said an unfilled role had forced a manager or executive to step in and do the work, while 46% said it had slowed response times to customers or clients.

Staff pressure was another recurring issue. Among respondents, 43% described their team as stretched thin when a role remains open for months, while 33% described the team as exhausted.

Resignations risk

Vacancies were also linked to wider workforce disruption. The survey found that 41% of leaders said a prolonged vacancy had directly led to another employee resigning, while a further 39% said they had not seen that happen but were concerned it could.

The commercial effect was also significant. Two-thirds of those surveyed, or 66%, said their organisation had definitely lost a customer, client or piece of business because a role stayed open too long, or suspected that had happened but could not confirm it.

The findings suggest employers do not see a simple answer in filling posts quickly at any cost. More than half of respondents, 52%, said hiring the wrong person quickly and leaving a critical role vacant for months were equally costly, while only 11% said the vacancy alone was worse.

That tension can lead to decisions employers later regret. Some 24% of leaders said they had hired someone they knew was not right for a role to relieve the pressure of an extended vacancy, and regretted the decision.

Search limits

The report also pointed to reluctance among many employers to widen the search for talent. Nearly half of respondents, 48%, said they would only consider offshore or nearshore talent as a last resort, or would not consider it at all, even after a prolonged domestic search.

At the same time, only 17% said nothing would change their mind. Another 25% said their organisation had simply never considered offshore or nearshore staffing, ahead of concerns about communication, cited by 21%, and data security and compliance, cited by 18%.

The $14,700 monthly estimate was modelled from cost ranges reported by respondents. Among them, 37% placed the monthly cost of an unfilled critical role between $5,000 and $15,000, while 21% put it between $15,001 and $30,000.

Tim Mobley, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Connext Global, said the financial effect of a vacancy often appears first in workload strain rather than in formal accounting. "Every open seat has a cost attached to it, whether a company measures it or not," Mobley said. "The teams absorbing that gap are the ones who pay for it first, long before it shows up in a budget review. Solving it faster, including with offshore or nearshore talent, protects the people already doing the job as much as it protects the bottom line."