KOGSYWhat it costsWorkforce

What does it cost when a new caregiver leaves in the first month?

Everything you spent getting them to the first shift, plus the cover you had to arrange afterwards, minus the margin they generated while they were there. Unlike the rate, this one is genuinely calculable from records you already hold, and it is usually larger than people expect because most of the spend happens before any revenue does.

Last updated 28 July 2026. No figure on this page is a sector average. The arithmetic is yours to run on your own numbers.

01 · Why

Why you probably do not know

Because the costs are spread across four places that never get added together. Advertising sits in marketing. Screening and background checks sit in compliance. Onboarding and orientation sit inside somebody's salaried hours. Training may sit with a third-party provider.

None of those systems knows that the person in question left three weeks later, so nothing anywhere connects the spend to the outcome. What you see is a recruiting budget and a headcount, and no line joining them.

02 · The method

How to work it out for your agency

Take your last ten hires. For each one:

acquisition   = advertising spend ÷ hires from that spend
screening     = background check + reference fees + drug screen
office time   = (interview + paperwork + onboarding minutes) ÷ 60 × office rate
training      = paid training hours × caregiver rate + any external fee
total in      = acquisition + screening + office time + training

margin out    = hours they actually worked × (bill rate − caregiver rate)
net cost      = total in − margin out

Then split the ten by how long they stayed. The ones who left inside a month are the ones where margin out never had a chance to catch total in, and their average is the number you are looking for.

Include the paid training hours. It is the item most often left out and often the largest single component.

03 · The figure

What a typical figure looks like

We do not have one. The components vary too widely with local wage rates, whether you train internally, and how much you spend on acquisition, for any sector figure to be meaningful.

The structural point holds regardless of the figures: because almost all of the cost is incurred before the first shift, the cost curve of a departure is steepest at the start. A leaver at three weeks costs you close to the full amount. A leaver at nine months has usually paid for themselves several times over. Those two events are counted identically in a turnover rate.

04 · The limits

What this is not

This is not an argument for any particular retention intervention, and we are not making one. It is a way of knowing what an early departure costs before you evaluate anyone's claim about how to prevent it, including ours.

05 · Next

Next

What caregiver turnover actually measures is the companion to this one. The cost is the tractable half of that question.

Not sure this is your biggest one? Rank all eight against your own numbers — fourteen questions, no score, and it asks for nothing before showing you the result.

All eight costs →