Why Rent Robots? – Part 1: Time and Costs

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On the current job market most employers face the problem of finding the right people for job positions. At the same time they constantly have to be mindful of the risk of turnover increase in their company. According to the 2018 Talent Shortage survey conducted by ManpowerGroup, 52% of Polish companies believe the key problem in the recruitment process is the lack of applicants. The issue here is not only a limited number of candidates but also insufficient qualifications and experience of people who are looking for a job.

The costs of finding a new employee are high.

The result of the shortage of applicants is that companies have to fight for an employee by making more and more competitive offers. That usually means a wider range of employee benefits and perks as well as higher salaries, which correspond to growing expectations of candidates. There are also the costs of searching for candidates: recruiters have to advertise offers through different channels and pay for web positioning or promote the company at career fairs and other paid events. The employee selection process is not quick or low-cost either as it includes résumé evaluation, job interviews, and skill assessment tests.

The recruitment and onboarding process can take even 3 months.

When you finally manage to hire a new employee, which can take even several months, the onboarding and training process begins, which also requires an investment from the company. Even after the hiring stage is completed, you cannot be certain that the new employee won’t decide to leave the job after a few months, triggering the process of recruiting, onboarding and training all over again. This process – from résumé collection to the start of the new employee’s unassisted work – might take even 3 months and costs a lot of time, money, and effort, which could be invested in other areas.

Renting a robot helps to limit the costs and time of recruitment and onboarding.

It is worth, then, to consider a different, definitely cheaper and faster solution: renting a robot. Recruiting and onboarding a robot is completed on average after 4 weeks, in which the company which decides to rent it doesn’t have to spend any resources on promoting job offers or selecting candidates. The company doesn’t need to invest in training either. In the Rent-a-Robot model it is Robo Shepherds who are responsible for training the robot and after 4 weeks it immediately starts working unassisted. It is also worth noting that in this model the company pays only for the work the robot actually does.

When renting a robot, the company doesn’t worry about most costs – the robot doesn’t need a wide range of benefits. It doesn’t take a day off or negotiate work hours; in fact, it is purposely designed to work all the time. It is estimated that robotization can yield around 20% savings in costs and that a robot can cost “as little as one-fifth the price of an onshore FTE.” Virtually eliminating the recruiting stage and requiring only a short onboarding process, a robot proves to be a convenient and affordable solution to openings in your company.

In the next article you will learn what benefits other than savings renting a robot can bring.


If you want to learn more about how robots can help your company, read the description of processes robotised by Digital Teammates. The description is a concise source of information about business purposes of robots and contains examples of already automated processes. You will learn what robots’ work looks like step by step and what assignments they are capable of completing. We hope that these examples will help you identify processes which can be automated to benefit you and your company.

You can download the description here.