End-to-End Case Study
I identified the true cost of a broken onboarding process, built the business case for leadership, and implemented an LMS solution — taking knowledge out of people's heads and into a system that scales.
Onboarding was tribal. New hires learned by watching others, knowledge lived in people's heads, and there was no scalable system for bringing people up to speed consistently. As the team grew, three failure modes appeared simultaneously.
Exit interview data made the driver clear: this wasn't a hiring problem. It was a retention and experience problem — rooted in how (or whether) people were onboarded.
Reason for Separation — Exit Interview Data
Dissatisfaction, performance failures, and abandonment — three of the four categories — are directly addressable through better onboarding and training. That insight became the foundation of the business case.
Before presenting any solution, I needed to answer one question for leadership: what is this actually costing us? I built a cost model across two dimensions — the direct cost of onboarding time lost to each separation, and the total cost of replacing employees who left.
| Department | Onboarding Hours | Pay Rate | # Separations | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Talent | 7 | $30 | 353 | $74,310 |
| Training | 30 | $30 | 353 | $317,700 |
| HR | 1 | $30 | 353 | $10,590 |
| Safety | 2.5 | $30 | 353 | $26,475 |
| Office Manager | 1.5 | $25 | 353 | $10,590 |
| Peer Training | 40 | $25 | 353 | $353,000 |
| Grand Total — Onboarding Hours Lost | $792,485 | |||
That $792,485 was only the onboarding hours cost. The fuller picture included the cost of actually replacing each employee who left — and what the trajectory looked like if the separation rate continued.
"633 employees hired. 353 separations. A net of 280 — and each one of those departures cost us $15,000 to replace."
From leadership presentation — based on Work Institute 2017 Retention Report benchmarksThe second part of the presentation made the case that eLearning — specifically EdApp's microlearning platform — was the right lever. I grounded this in external research so leadership wasn't being asked to take my word for it.
Brandon Hall Group
40–60%
Less time for employees to study the same material via eLearning vs. traditional instructor-led training
Survey of 2,500 Companies
218%
Higher revenue per employee at companies with comprehensive training programs
Same Study
+24%
Higher profit margins at organisations with structured, comprehensive training
IBM
$200M
Saved after switching from in-person to eLearning delivery across the organisation
Cisco
40–60%
Reduction in overall training costs after transitioning to eLearning
These weren't presented as guarantees — they were presented as directional benchmarks showing that the investment in a structured LMS system had a strong track record of return across industries and company sizes.
After securing leadership buy-in, I designed and implemented the LMS in EdApp — structured learning paths, role-specific content, completion tracking, and a safety training module built to directly address the TRIR risk.
The design principle was simple: knowledge should live in the system, not in a person. 40 hours of peer training time per new hire — the single largest cost driver in the separation model — needed to become structured, trackable, and reusable.
We made a promise to provide the tools, training, and opportunities to challenge and empower our leaders and employees. We made a promise to continually improve on the excellent customer service that we already provide.
Our employees are our customers — and it is our duty to deliver on that promise. This system is how we keep it.
The LMS implementation addressed the three cost drivers identified in the business case: onboarding time waste, high separation rates, and safety incident exposure.
Beyond the metrics, the less visible outcome was cultural: onboarding stopped being a burden passed from one senior person to the next, and became something the organisation owned, tracked, and could improve over time.