By Chantelle Botha
IN my previous life as a recruiter, I built a spreadsheet to calculate the total cost of onboarding a new hire. While every role differs slightly, the numbers showed that at least 30–50% of that person’s annual salary is spent on recruitment, training, and onboarding.
This is before the real costs begin. According to Gallup, only 12% of employees agree their company does a great job onboarding. Nearly nine out of ten people start a new role under-supported. This is where a less visible, but far more expensive cost creeps in: hesitation.
We don’t lose people or productivity because they can’t do the job. We lose them because we never helped them belong in it.
When onboarding falls short, hesitation shows up in decision-making and willingness to take ownership. During those first critical 100 days, that hesitation erodes self-belief.
Think back to when you first entered the workplace, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Then day one arrives and you suddenly feel like a rabbit in the headlights. The confidence you felt retreated and you started second-guessing yourself.
I’ve experienced this feeling every time I started a new role. I call it confidence shrinkage.
Confidence shrinkage is not a lack of competence. It’s a natural response to uncertainty, unspoken expectations, and the pressure to prove yourself. When left unaddressed, it manifests as hesitation.
Here’s what hesitation looks like in the first 100 days:
A new hire sitting in a meeting with an idea but choosing not to voice it.
An employee labouring over an email worried it sounds “stupid.”
A junior manager deferring decisions upward because they don’t yet trust their judgement.
A talented recruit waiting for permission instead of taking initiative.
Each of these moments feels small. But multiplied across weeks, teams, and salaries, they compound into lost velocity, delayed decisions, and managerial dependency.
The hidden cost of hesitation determines whether you hired a future contributor or a long-term passenger. We ask new hires to “hit the ground running,” but are we putting our money where our mouth is by building the runway?
Recruitment is a significant financial investment. Without intentional leadership, that investment is undermined when confidence shrinkage goes unnoticed. This pattern will deepen unless it’s arrested.
This places a clear responsibility on line managers. Not just to onboard the role, but to onboard the human. Confidence doesn’t automatically follow capability; it must be deliberately cultivated.
When I deliver confidence-focused onboarding for graduate intakes, the impact is unmistakable in reducing early attrition. The talent teams I partner with don’t view onboarding as administration; they see it as a strategic lever for engagement, performance, and risk reduction.
So let me leave you with three diagnostic questions:
How long does it really take a new hire to challenge a decision?
How often do managers complain about “hand-holding” in the first six months?
How many capable employees wait for permission instead of taking ownership?
If any of these feel familiar, you’re already paying the cost, whether you’ve named it or not.
The question is not whether confidence shrinkage exists in your organisation, but how long you’re willing to let it compound. Now is the time to conduct an onboarding audit that minimises hesitation and maximises belonging, ownership, and impact from day one.
Chantelle Botha, known globally as The Catalyst, is an Identity Architect who partners with leadership and talent teams to identify and eliminate confidence shrinkage in onboarding. Using her proprietary Phoenix Blueprint, she helps companies build a culture of curiosity and courage that translates into confident decision-making and measurable results.
Executives interested in conducting an onboarding audit to uncover the hidden cost of hesitation can contact Chanelle:
WhatsApp: +27 83 476 4265
Email: chantelle@phoenixconfidence.com
Website: https://phoenixconfidence.com/
