You approved the vacancy in July, the job description was written. A few CVs came through, somebody went on holiday, one candidate wasn’t quite right, another wanted £5,000 more than you’d budgeted. The hiring manager decided to “see what else is out there”.
Then August happened.
Now it’s the end of September. The role is still vacant. Sound familiar?
One of the biggest misconceptions in recruitment is that leaving a position unfilled saves money. Technically, your payroll might be lower, but the work hasn’t disappeared. It’s being absorbed by somebody else, delayed, deprioritised or simply not done. And within finance, that can become particularly expensive. So if you’re still sitting on a finance vacancy from July, there’s a question worth asking:
What is waiting actually costing you?
The Salary You’re Saving Isn’t Really a Saving
Let’s say you’re recruiting a Financial Controller on £75,000. Every month the role remains vacant, you’re technically “saving” £6,250 in gross salary. Looks good on a spreadsheet.
Except somebody is still:
- Closing month-end
- Producing management accounts
- Managing the audit
- Reviewing controls
- Supporting the finance team
- Answering stakeholder questions
- Forecasting cash
Maybe your Finance Director is doing it. Perhaps the Finance Manager has stepped up or maybe responsibilities have been distributed across three different people.
The salary hasn’t disappeared. The cost has moved somewhere else. And frequently, you’re asking more expensive or more strategically valuable employees to spend their time covering work that should belong to the vacant position.
The Biggest Cost Is Often Productivity
Imagine your Finance Director is covering part of the Financial Controller vacancy. They’re spending another 10 hours every week reviewing work, solving problems and keeping month-end moving. That’s 10 hours they’re not spending on:
- Strategy
- Commercial decision-making
- Cash optimisation
- Investment
- Growth planning
- Board support
Multiply that across three months and the opportunity cost starts becoming significant. Then consider everyone else affected.
- The Finance Manager takes on another reporting responsibility.
- The Management Accountant works later during month-end.
- The CFO spends more time reviewing numbers.
- HR continues coordinating interviews.
- The CEO gets dragged into another recruitment conversation.
- An empty chair can consume an extraordinary amount of time.
And none of that appears next to “vacancy cost” on your P&L.
Your Best People Usually Pick Up the Slack
Here’s another problem. When somebody leaves, who gets their work? Usually your best people. Why? Because they’re reliable. You know they’ll get it done. Initially, they probably don’t mind, “Of course I’ll cover it until we find somebody.”
Two weeks becomes six. Six becomes ten. Suddenly, your best Finance Manager is doing their job plus 30% of somebody else’s. That’s when frustration begins.
Gallup’s workplace research has repeatedly highlighted the relationship between employee engagement, productivity and organisational performance. An unfilled vacancy does not automatically create disengagement. But asking high performers to absorb additional workloads indefinitely is certainly not a great retention strategy.
The worst possible outcome isn’t simply having one vacancy. It’s allowing one vacancy to create another.
Finance Vacancies Can Slow the Entire Business
Finance doesn’t operate in isolation. If management information is late, leadership decisions can be late, if commercial analysis isn’t happening, sales decisions can suffer, and if cash forecasting deteriorates, investment decisions become harder. Also if month-end takes longer, everybody waits longer for accurate numbers, this is why the cost of an unfilled finance vacancy can extend far beyond the finance department. Consider a vacant:
- Finance Business Partner position. The cost isn’t simply their salary. It’s potentially commercial teams operating with less financial insight.
- Financial Controller. The cost could include slower reporting, weaker controls and more senior management intervention.
- Finance Director. Now you’re potentially missing strategic financial challenge at leadership level.
The more senior or commercially important the vacancy, the greater the potential opportunity cost of leaving it open.
Slow Hiring Costs You Candidates Too
There is another slightly ridiculous thing that happens when businesses struggle to hire – they become more cautious. The vacancy has already been open for eight weeks. So when a strong candidate appears, instead of moving decisively, everybody thinks:
“We’ve waited this long. Should we just see another couple?”
Then another week passes. The candidate interviews somewhere else. They receive an offer. And suddenly the search starts again. We’ve explored this before in How Long Should It Take to Hire a Financial Controller in the UK? A good recruitment process should give businesses enough time to assess candidates properly without creating unnecessary delays.
There is a difference between being thorough and being indecisive. Good candidates usually notice it.
The £5k Problem
One of the most frustrating reasons vacancies remain open is salary. Imagine this:
Your preferred candidate wants £80,000, but your budget is £75,000. You decide not to move. The role then remains vacant for another two months, you conduct another six interviews, your Finance Director spends another 20 hours involved in recruitment, the team continues covering the workload, then eventually…
You hire someone for £80,000 anyway. What exactly did the business save? This is why salary benchmarking should happen before recruitment begins. We explored the wider problem in What a £5k Salary Misjudgement Really Costs You in Finance Recruitment.
And if you’re unsure whether your salary is aligned with the market, We Do Benchmark can independently benchmark finance and accounting salaries and benefits against your company size, location and role requirements.
Waiting for a Unicorn Is Expensive
Sometimes salary isn’t the issue. The brief is. Businesses start searching for a Financial Controller. Then somebody adds: “It would be great if they had FP&A experience.”
- Then: “Could they also have implemented NetSuite?”
- And: “PE experience would be useful.”
- Plus: “Ideally ACA from a Big Four background.”
- Oh, and they need to have worked in your exact industry.
- Within 20 miles of the office.
- For the salary you’ve budgeted.
Congratulations. You’ve invented a candidate who may not exist.
The longer recruitment continues, the easier it becomes to convince yourself that the next CV might finally contain everything. Sometimes it will. Usually, the better question is:
Which requirements actually determine whether somebody will succeed in the role?
Separate your genuine non-negotiables from your nice-to-haves. You may discover your candidate pool becomes considerably larger.
Q4 Makes Indecision More Expensive
This is where timing matters. A vacancy in July feels manageable. A vacancy entering October can feel very different. Suddenly, you’re approaching:
- Year-end
- Budgeting season
- Audit preparation
- Annual planning
- Q1 forecasting
- Christmas holidays
And if your preferred candidate has a three-month notice period?
A recruitment process that starts in October could easily result in somebody joining in the new year. This is why the end of September is an important moment to look at any long-standing finance vacancies and make a decision.
Not necessarily: “Hire somebody immediately.”
But: Why haven’t we hired yet?
If you can’t answer that clearly, that’s the problem you need to solve.
But Don’t Let Speed Create a Bad Hire
There is an important warning here. The answer to slow recruitment isn’t panic recruitment.
“This role has been open for three months. Just hire somebody.” Please don’t.
Research from the Recruitment & Employment Confederation has previously estimated that a poor middle-management hire earning £42,000 can ultimately cost a business £132,000 once the wider consequences are considered.
A bad finance hire can create problems far beyond the recruitment fee.
- Errors.
- Management time.
- Reduced productivity.
- Team disruption.
- Replacement costs.
And then you are back where you started: With another vacancy.
How to Fix a Finance Vacancy That’s Been Open Too Long
If you’ve been recruiting since July and nothing has happened, don’t simply continue doing the same thing. Review the search.
Ask yourself:
Is the salary right?
Benchmark it against the current market rather than the salary somebody earned in the role two years ago.
Is the brief realistic?
Separate essential requirements from preferences.
Is the interview process too long?
If you’re asking candidates to complete four interviews over five weeks, there may be opportunities to simplify it.
Are decision-makers aligned?
If the CFO wants one thing and the CEO wants another, solve that before interviewing more people.
Are you reaching passive candidates?
The right person may not be actively applying to job adverts.
Are you giving feedback quickly enough?
Good candidates shouldn’t spend a week wondering whether you liked them.
Do you actually need a permanent hire?
For some senior positions, interim or fractional finance leadership could solve the immediate business problem.
Most long-running vacancies have a reason. Find it. Then fix it.
The Real Cost of an Unfilled Finance Vacancy
There isn’t one universal number.
A vacant £40,000 Management Accountant role and a vacant £150,000 Finance Director position create very different business impacts. But the true cost is rarely zero. It could include:
- Lost productivity
- Senior management time
- Overtime
- Temporary cover
- Recruitment costs
- Delayed projects
- Slower reporting
- Reduced commercial insight
- Team burnout
- Lost candidates
- Increased retention risk
- Missed opportunities
That’s why focusing purely on the salary you’re “saving” gives you a very incomplete picture.
The better question is: What isn’t happening because this person isn’t here?
Still Sitting on That Vacancy From July?
Then don’t carry the same recruitment problem into Q4. Work out what has stopped you hiring.
- Salary? Fix the benchmark.
- Candidate quality? Review the brief and sourcing strategy.
- Slow decisions? Simplify the process.
- Not sure whether you need a permanent person? Explore alternative models.
At We Do Group, we help businesses recruit finance and accounting professionals across the UK, benchmark salaries and access fractional senior finance leadership when a permanent hire isn’t the right immediate solution. Because leaving a role vacant might look cheaper than hiring. But after three months of lost productivity, additional workload and delayed decisions, the question isn’t whether you can afford to hire.
It’s whether you can afford to keep waiting.
