In 2023, Aisha Patel, founder of an 18-person fintech startup, mis-hired an operations coordinator who left after eight months. Direct recruitment fees, backfilled contract work, severance, lost investor time, and two months of missed growth initiatives totaled roughly $500,000 when you include opportunity cost. That single scenario highlights why leaders must quantify the invisible line items tied to in-house hiring decisions before they scale.
Most executives budget a salary and benefits and stop there, but the real cost of an in-house hire extends across recruiting, onboarding, tooling, and supervision. Recruiter fees often add 15–25% of first-year salary, onboarding requires 40–120 hours of manager time, and software licenses (G Suite, Slack, 1Password, Workday) add recurring overhead. These are the structural taxes that compound across hires and years.
Use this practical model to calculate hidden costs for any in-house hire: start with base salary, add 25% benefits, 15% recruiter fee, estimate 80 hours of manager time at $150/hr for onboarding and training, 3 months of reduced productivity at 30% capacity, and a 20% annual turnover-adjustment. For a $80,000 role this standardizes to roughly $120,000 true first-year cost — 50% higher than payroll alone.
Teams under 25 people pay a higher marginal cost for hires because each hire drains founder and COO bandwidth during recruiting and onboarding. Founders spending 10 hours/week at an opportunity value of $200/hr quickly convert hiring delays into missed partnerships, slower product cycles, and unclosed deals. That hidden time tax is why early-stage companies often over-index on contractors before realizing the coordination cost.
Beyond dollars, in-house hiring carries continuity and confidentiality risks that translate into financial exposure. Unstandardized knowledge transfer, weak access controls, and ad-hoc process documentation create gaps when an employee departs. Those gaps often require emergency contractor costs, accelerated developer hours, or temporary executive intervention — all of which are expensive and avoidable.
Hiring a Freelance Assistant or ad-hoc contractor reduces benefits burden but introduces variability, scattered documentation, and inconsistent SLAs. Freelancers can be inexpensive per hour, yet the hidden coordination overhead — re-briefing, variable quality, and fragmented tools — inflates total cost and risks customer-facing errors. That’s why a reliable Virtual Assistant services model must include documented onboarding and measurable outcomes.
MySigrid applies a proprietary Continuity-ROI Framework to convert hidden costs into predictable savings. The framework maps every hiring tax line — recruiting fees, manager time, onboarding hours, productivity drag, turnover risk, licensing — and assigns an offset through three levers: vetted talent placement, documented onboarding templates, and AI-enabled continuity tools. This converts a fuzzy expense profile into a verifiable ROI line item.
Instead of a 15% recruiter fee per hire, MySigrid’s subscription model absorbs sourcing and vetting via a bench of pre-vetted Executive Assistant candidates screened for confidentiality and async collaboration. Onboarding follows a documented 10-step SigridShift Playbook using Notion templates, Calendly automations, and secure credential handoffs via 1Password and Okta, reducing onboarding time from 80 hours to under 20 manager hours on average.
MySigrid enforces SOC-like operational practices for remote Executive Assistant relationships: role-based access controls, encrypted credential vaults, documented SOPs, and GPT-enabled handover notes. When transitions occur, the cost of an emergency fix — hiring a temporary contractor, patching knowledge gaps, or buying consultant hours — drops to near zero because processes and documentation preserve continuity.
MySigrid’s AI Accelerator augments Executive Assistant workflows with meeting summarization, prioritized inbox triage, and task automation through Zapier and native APIs to HubSpot and Google Workspace. That reduces the typical 30% productivity drag during ramp-up to under 5%, meaning founders reclaim time sooner and avoid delayed deal cycles that cost tens of thousands per month.
Compare a $95,000 in-house Executive Assistant with 25% benefits and 15% recruiter fee to a MySigrid subscription. First-year all-in for in-house: ~$144,000 after productivity drag and onboarding. First-year for MySigrid: subscription, tools, and quarterly contingency — ~$60,000. The delta funds product iterations, marketing, or a second senior hire; more importantly, the MySigrid model converts unpredictable churn into predictable monthly spend.
MySigrid tracks time-to-productivity, inbox response SLAs, meeting efficiency (minutes saved), error-rate in stakeholder communications, and retention of institutional knowledge. These outcome metrics translate to line-item savings in recruiting spend, reduced executive hours on admin tasks, and faster revenue cycles — metrics founders and COOs can place directly on the P&L.
The 90-day SigridShift Playbook aligns expectations and accelerates ROI. Weeks 1–2 focus on role calibration, access provisioning, and Notion-based SOP import. Weeks 3–6 prioritize inbox triage, calendar rationalization (Calendly + Google Workspace), and stakeholder handoffs. Weeks 7–12 refine automation, KPIs, and a documented continuity package for the company vault. This disciplined ramp reduces first-year hidden costs by 40–60% versus an in-house hire.
Not every cost vanishes: culture fit and domain knowledge still matter and may justify an in-house hire in specific cases, like product managers embedded in engineering. MySigrid’s framework is designed to make that decision rational by making the hidden costs explicit and showing the incremental benefits of in-house staffing when they truly outweigh outsourcing alternatives. Leaders who skip this accounting routinely overpay.
Every founder and operations leader should run this audit before posting a job. For teams under 25, the arithmetic often favors a subscription-based Executive Assistant that delivers predictable SLAs, documented onboarding, and security controls. If you want a concrete model, MySigrid provides role templates, Notion SOPs, and a cost-offset calculator for prospective clients.
Explore how a dedicated Executive Assistant from MySigrid reduces hidden hiring costs while improving confidentiality, continuity, and measurable outcomes by visiting Executive Assistant and checking available options on our Plans & Pricing page. Ready to transform your operations? Book a free 20-minute consultation to discover how MySigrid can help you scale efficiently.