Stats Don’t Lie

One of the statistics from our retailing book that I found interesting was the one about how much a retailer is hurt by hiring a drug user. It says, “a retailer incurs an additional $7,000 to $10,000 of expenses in medical costs, absences, turnover, and lost productivity when it hires a drug user.”

That one surprised me, because I had never thought about it that way before. I always knew that regular drug users would cost the company some lost productivity, but I had no idea it was such a large amount of money. But now that I think about it I can understand the absences, turnover, and even medical costs as well.

Another statistic that I thought was crazy was the one about a company replacing an employee. It says, “The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that it costs a company one-third of a new hire’s annual compensation to replace an employee.” I really thought that this was outrageous. That isn’t so bad when we’re talking a McDonald’s employee, but when we’re talking an employee who makes $60,000 a year would cost $20,000 to replace! This shows that it really does pay for companies to keep their employees if they have good ones. They will try to keep you as long as you are doing good work.