The Training Problem: New Hires Left in the Dark
Recruiting the right people already takes time and money. But the real cost often shows up later, when new employees take longer than expected to become productive.
In many workplaces the problem is not the new hire, it is the environment they step into. Storage is unclear, processes are inconsistent, and every colleague has their own way of doing the same job. Instead of learning the role, the new employee spends weeks asking basic questions. The result is delayed onboarding, lost output, and higher labour cost.
How to Recognize the Problem
Most managers can sense when onboarding drags out, but it helps to make it measurable. Three simple checks are enough to confirm it:
Compare planned onboarding time with the actual time recent hires needed to reach expected performance.
Ask new employees how much of their first month was spent figuring out where things were or how processes worked.
Look at how much time supervisors or experienced staff spent explaining basics that should have been obvious.
You do not need a large data set. Even a quick look at the last few hires is usually enough to see if the system is supporting them or slowing them down.
What Slow Onboarding Really Costs
When onboarding runs longer than planned, it quietly eats into the budget. Imagine you expect a new hire to be effective after four weeks, but in practice it takes six. Those two extra weeks are not free.
At 30€ gross per hour, a 40-hour week costs 1.200€. Once you add the average employer contribution of 28 percent, the real weekly cost is about 1.540€. Multiply that by the two extra weeks and the company has already spent over 3.000€ on one employee before they reach the level of productivity that was originally expected.
If you hire ten people a year, that number grows to more than 30.000€. And that only covers direct labour cost. It does not include slower team performance, supervisors pulled away from their own work, or the possibility that frustrated new employees leave before they have even settled.
At 5S Now we treat onboarding that runs more than a week beyond plan as a warning sign. In our professional opinion, this points to missing standards and unclear organization that make it harder for new staff to get productive quickly.
Why This Happens
Extended onboarding is rarely the fault of the new employee. It usually comes down to the workplace itself. Without clear order, new people spend valuable time asking questions like:
Where are supplies kept, and is it the same for every shift?
Which version of this form or file is the correct one?
Why does one colleague show me a method that contradicts what another told me yesterday?
This uncertainty slows down learning and makes errors more likely. Every hour spent clarifying the basics is an hour not spent building the skills the job actually requires.
How 5S Speeds Up Onboarding
The most effective way to shorten onboarding is to make the workplace easier to understand from the start. That is where 5S comes in.
The step that matters most here is Standardize. By creating consistency across the workplace, you remove the barriers that make new employees hesitate or second-guess.
In practice, that looks like:
Storage systems that follow the same logic across departments so materials, supplies, or documents are always where you expect them.
Labels and visual cues that answer routine questions without needing a colleague.
Work instructions that match how tasks are really done, not just how one experienced employee prefers to do them.
Layouts that are consistent so moving from one area to another does not feel like entering a different company.
With this structure in place, onboarding is smoother. New employees learn their role instead of learning how to navigate confusion. Supervisors also save time, because they do not need to explain the same basics again and again.
Why More Training Hours Are Not the Answer
Some companies respond to slow onboarding by adding more training. While it looks like a solution, it does not address the root cause. If the environment is inconsistent and disorganized, more hours in training simply extend the confusion.
New hires might finish a longer training program, but once they return to the workplace they still face mixed instructions and unclear standards. The problem is not solved, it is only stretched out.
The real improvement comes from building a workplace where the correct way of working is visible and consistent. That makes training shorter, easier, and more reliable.
Time to Rethink Onboarding
Recruitment is already expensive. Allowing poor organization to extend onboarding only adds another cost that stays hidden until you look for it. Every additional week a new hire takes to get up to speed is money spent without the return you expected.
At 5S Now we help businesses remove that cost. With standardized, organized systems, new employees understand their workplace from the start and can focus on the job itself.
If you want to shorten onboarding, reduce wasted cost, and give new employees the confidence to succeed from day one, schedule a free site visit with us. Together we will uncover the hidden causes of delayed onboarding and show you how to fix them.
