A late start is only one part of the picture. To build the rest with your own figures, see the cost of a frontline hire in the Netherlands.
On this page: How do you work out the cost of employee no-shows and late starts? · Who pays when a new starter does not arrive? · Why doesn't the recruitment budget see the cost? · What mistakes hide the cost of no-shows and late starts? · What does this look like on the shop floor? · How Radius helps · FAQ
How do you work out the cost of employee no-shows and late starts?
Count the shift days lost, then price each one at the extra cost of covering it. Four steps:
- Count late starts in shift days. A late start is the number of shift days between the date the client needed someone and the date they actually started.
- Count day-one no-shows separately. A day-one no-show is a planned starter who did not arrive on the first day. Note the reason where you know it.
- Find the extra cost of covering one shift. That is what overtime or last-minute agency cover costs on top of the planned shift. It is not the starter's full wage.
- Multiply, and count each cost once. A late start and the overtime that covers it are one cost, not two.
Radius Hire's 2026 research paper on frontline hiring handoffs shows the arithmetic. It assumes that ten starters a month begin three days later than needed: 30 shift days. At an assumed extra €60 per shift for overtime or agency cover, that comes to €1,800 a month for one role at one site. The paper's full model, which adds repeated work and avoidable drop-outs, is set out in what slow hiring costs.
Illustrative: every figure is an assumption, not a Radius Hire customer result, a benchmark or a forecast. The example assumes one shift per starter per day.
Who pays when a new starter does not arrive?
Four parties, and only one of them sits in recruitment.
| Who pays | How they pay | Where it is booked |
|---|---|---|
| The client site | Overtime, last-minute agency cover or lower output | Payroll and operations |
| The recruiter | Hours spent finding, screening and preparing a replacement | Nowhere, unless someone counts them |
| The agency | Margin lost to those hours | The agency's own results |
| The compliance file | Checks done late or under pressure | Risk, until something goes wrong |
Summary built for this article from the paper's "who pays" section.
The recruiter's hours are the hardest to see. The paper's view is that in busy teams, repeated questions, resent documents and chased approvals may add up to as much time as screening itself. It also says it found no reliable European data on this, so measure it in your own process. Its view on margin is just as careful: staffing margins can be thin, which is a reason to count lost hours, not proof that late starts cause low margins.
The compliance file pays when checks slip. Dutch government guidance (Rijksoverheid) says a company that hires an agency worker must check the worker's original identity document itself before work starts. That check cannot simply be skipped to save a shift. For how to plan these checks before the offer, see checking frontline candidates before the offer. Where a work permit is needed, a missing document is more than a delay, so check the current rules with your legal adviser.
Why doesn't the recruitment budget see the cost?
Because the report counts placements, and a placement is not a worked shift.
The recruitment report measures candidates screened, interviewed and placed. The cost of unfilled shifts is paid for somewhere else. The site's payroll carries the overtime, and operations carries the lost output. Neither number comes back to the report. The paper puts it in one line: "Overtime is a recruiting failure that shows up in payroll."
What mistakes hide the cost of no-shows and late starts?
- Pricing an empty shift at the full wage. That overstates the loss. Fix: use the extra cost of cover.
- Counting the same day twice. Fix: a late start and the overtime that covers it are one cost.
- Lumping no-shows and late starts together. They have different causes, owners and fixes. Fix: record them separately, each with a reason.
- Leaving the number in payroll. Fix: send late starts in shift days and no-shows as a count to both the agency account manager and the site lead, in the same message, every week. They sit well alongside the wider measures of quality of hire in frontline recruitment.
- Leaving "ready to start" without an owner. Fix: for each starter, one person makes sure the contract is signed and the ID check is planned before the weekend, not on Monday morning. A first day checklist for agency workers helps that person.
What does this look like on the shop floor?
At 05:45 on a Monday, a team leader at a cold store near Rotterdam starts the shift with four empty positions.
Two new starters did not show up. Two more were ready to work but could not start, because a contract signature and an ID check were not done by Friday. She starts asking who can stay on after their own shift. This week's recruitment report will still count four placements.
The two no-shows may have had reasons nobody could control. The paper says candidates also leave for reasons no agency controls, like a better offer or a change at home. The two late starts are different: the candidates were ready, but the last step had no owner and no deadline before the weekend.
This scene is a composite, not a documented case.
How Radius helps
Radius Hire is an AI hiring platform for frontline roles, built in Amsterdam for staffing agencies and employers who hire for the work floor, and a person makes every hiring decision. In the Radius ATS, offers are sent and signed electronically in the same pipeline that runs from applied to signed, and reports show time to hire, drop-off and cost per hire per role, site and source. For staffing agencies, each check keeps its source and its date.