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

Connext Global has published research estimating that a single unfilled critical role costs companies USD $14,700 a month. The survey also found many employers linked long-running vacancies to lost business.

The findings are based on a survey of 750 US full-time employees involved in hiring decisions or with visibility into budget and cost impacts. It examined how long critical roles remain vacant, how work is reassigned, and how employers compare the cost of a bad hire with the cost of leaving a role open.

The research found that 66% of leaders said their organisation had either definitely lost a customer, client, or piece of business because a role stayed open too long, or suspected this had happened but could not confirm it. Almost half, 46%, said an unfilled role had slowed response times to customers or clients.

Vacancies also appeared to push work upward. The survey found that 47% of leaders had seen a manager or executive step in to cover an unfilled role, while 57% said the workload mainly fell on a manager or one or two employees rather than being spread across a wider team.

Hidden costs

The report suggests many employers do not formally measure these effects. Fifteen per cent of respondents said they had no idea what their unfilled positions were costing each month, while 33% said they directly calculated lost productivity and 35% said they tracked overtime tied to a vacancy.

Pressure on existing staff was another recurring theme. Some 43% described their team as stretched thin when a role stayed open for months, and 33% described their team as exhausted.

That strain can create broader staffing problems. Forty-one per cent of leaders said a prolonged vacancy had directly led to another employee resigning, while a further 39% said it had not yet happened on their team, but they were concerned it might.

The data also indicates that performance can deteriorate quickly. Twenty-two per cent of respondents said an open role hurt team performance within the first two weeks, while 39% said the damage appeared after about a month. In total, 61% saw an impact within roughly four weeks. Even so, 37% said their longest vacancy in the past year lasted three months or more.

Hiring dilemma

The study points to a trade-off between waiting for the right candidate and rushing a decision under pressure. More than half of leaders, 52%, said hiring the wrong person quickly and leaving a critical role vacant for months were equally costly over time.

Nearly a quarter, 24%, said they had hired someone they knew was not right for a role simply to relieve the pressure of an extended vacancy and later regretted it. Only 11% thought the vacancy alone was worse.

The research also examined attitudes to overseas recruitment. Almost half of respondents (48%) said they would consider offshore or nearshore talent only as a last resort, or not at all, even after a prolonged domestic search. Still, only 17% said nothing would change their mind.

When asked what prevented earlier use of offshore or nearshore staffing, 25% said their organisation had simply never considered it. That was ahead of communication concerns at 21% and data security and compliance concerns at 18%.

Management burden

The report presents vacancies not only as a hiring issue but also as a management and operational problem. When executives and line managers absorb day-to-day work from open roles, organisations may remove salary costs from payroll without removing the tasks that still need to be done.

This can distort how savings are viewed internally. A vacant position may look like a short-term reduction in staffing costs, but the survey suggests businesses often pay elsewhere through delayed work, overtime, slower customer responses, and the risk of staff departures.

For companies trying to contain labour costs, the findings underline how vacancy management can affect revenue and morale. Lost business, customer delays, and added pressure on key staff emerged as the main areas where respondents said the cost of waiting became visible.

Tim Mobley, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Connext Global, commented on the findings.

"Every open seat has a cost attached to it, whether a company measures it or not. 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," said Mobley.