Hiring a new employee is usually seen as a positive milestone.
Growth. Momentum. Progress.
But beyond salary, benefits, and recruitment fees, there’s a hidden cost that most organizations underestimate or don’t see at all.
And no, it’s not the coffee machine.
Most companies want new employees to be productive as quickly as possible.
Yet a familiar scenario plays out again and again:
This isn’t a people problem.
It’s a process problem.
And it’s surprisingly expensive.
Every onboarding triggers a chain of manual tasks:
Individually, these tasks seem small.
Collectively, they add up.
In our experience, 3–4 hours of administrative work per new hire is a realistic baseline spread across HR, managers, and IT.
And that’s just onboarding.
(We break down the numbers in more detail in our post on The Hidden Costs of Manual User Provisioning (And How to Calculate the Real Impact), if you want to see how this scales over time.)
The key issue?
This time is rarely tracked, budgeted, or questioned.
Because it’s spread out.
The real cost often isn’t the administrative time itself it’s what doesn’t happen:
First impressions matter.
And few things say “welcome to the company” like being unable to log in.
(Okay, maybe being unable to log in and not knowing who to ask.)
What works, barely – at 10 employees starts breaking at 30.
At 50, it becomes expensive.
At 100, it’s a serious problem.
More employees mean:
Without structure, the cost per hire increases as the company grows even though it should decrease.
That’s the opposite of scalability.
Manual onboarding often leads to access being granted “just in case.”
But access is rarely reviewed with the same urgency.
Over time:
And suddenly, onboarding inefficiency turns into a security concern.
Not because someone did something wrong but because no one owns the full picture.
In an ideal world:
Onboarding should be a business process, not a recurring coordination exercise.
Most companies don’t realize how much onboarding actually costs because the cost is hidden in time, focus, and friction.
You’re already paying for it.
The question is whether you’re getting value in return.
Or just getting really good at repeating the same manual steps.
Growing companies shouldn’t have to choose between moving fast and staying in control.
Adcyma is built for organizations that are past the “small and simple” phase, but not ready for heavyweight enterprise IAM projects. By automating onboarding, role changes, and offboarding, Adcyma reduces manual work while giving teams better visibility into who has access to what and why.
The result is fewer delays, fewer mistakes, and less time spent coordinating routine tasks. Instead of scaling chaos, companies can scale structure – without slowing down.