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What is classroom training actually costing you?

The invoice from the training provider is the small number. The expensive part is the hours your people spend away from work — and that cost scales with every single employee you add. Put your own numbers in below.

Your numbers

Every field is editable. The result updates as you type.

Switching currency resets the amounts to typical values for that market — unless you have already changed them.
Saved on the first roll-out
–
Classroom–
Digital–
Time away from work, classroom–
Facilitator fees–
Time away from work, digital–
Production, paid once–

HOW THE MATH WORKS

No hidden assumptions.

Every number in the calculation comes from a field you control. Here is exactly what goes into each side.

Classroom

Hours in the room plus travel time, multiplied by everyone who has to attend and what their hour costs. Plus a facilitator fee for every session you have to run to get through the whole group.

Digital

One production cost, paid once. Then the hours people spend actually doing the course — usually a fraction of a classroom day, because nothing waits for the slowest question in the room.

What is not in here

Venue, catering, flights and hotels. Repeat sessions for new joiners. The cost of people forgetting it. All of them push the classroom number up — we left them out to keep the comparison conservative.

ONBOARDING

What does a bad first 90 days cost you?

Someone who leaves in month five costs you the whole recruitment again — plus the ramp-up you already paid for. This is the only number in the calculator that has a randomised field experiment behind it.

Your numbers

Currency follows the selector in the calculator above.

21 % is the median replacement cost across 31 case studies (Boushey & Glynn, Center for American Progress, 2012). 32 % is the drop in quit rate measured in a randomised field experiment with 605 new hires (Cable, Gino & Staats, Administrative Science Quarterly, 2013). Both are starting points — your own attrition rate is the number that matters most, and only you have it.
Saved per year
–
Early leavers today–
After better onboarding–
People leaving in year one, today–
People leaving after–
Cost per replacement–
Programme cost, paid once–

IT SECURITY & COMPLIANCE

How many doors are standing open?

We are not going to put a kroner figure on a breach that has not happened. What we can show you is how many of your colleagues are likely to open the door — and how much that number moves. Be sceptical of anyone who promises you more than this.

Your numbers

Exposure, not prophecy. Every field is yours to change.

33 % is the measured baseline before training across 64,000 organisations (KnowBe4, 2026) — a vendor that sells awareness training, so treat their improvement figures with more caution than their baseline. Independent research points the other way: a 15-month study of 14,733 employees at ETH Zürich found embedded training made click rates worse, and a 2025 UC San Diego study of 19,500 staff found no significant link between completing annual training and resisting phishing. That is exactly why the second field is yours to set, not ours.
Fewer people with an open door
–
Would click today–
Would click after–
Clicks per year, today–
Clicks per year, after–
Not yet compliant–
To reach full completion–

SOURCES

Where these numbers come from — and which ones we left out.

What we used

  • 21 % of annual salary — median cost of replacing an employee across 31 case studies. Boushey & Glynn, Center for American Progress, 2012. Source
  • 32 % fewer quits — randomised field experiment, 605 new hires, six-month follow-up. Cable, Gino & Staats, Administrative Science Quarterly, 2013. Source
  • 62 % of breaches involve a human element — Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, 2026. Stable at 60–62 % for three years running. Source
  • 33 % baseline click rate — measured across 64,000 organisations before training. KnowBe4, 2026. Vendor data: solid as a baseline, weaker as proof of improvement. Source

What we deliberately left out

  • “82 % better retention with strong onboarding.” Attributed to Brandon Hall Group and quoted everywhere. We could not find a primary source with a method, a sample size or a definition. We are not repeating it.
  • “69 % stay up to three years.” Traceable — to a single company, Corning Glass Works, in the 1990s. It is not a general benchmark.
  • “Half to two times annual salary to replace someone.” Gallup publishes no method or source for this figure. It is a rule of thumb, not evidence.
  • An 87 % drop in phishing clicks. Vendor-reported, no control group, and the vendor's own 2026 press release and report page disagree with each other. Independent studies at ETH Zürich and UC San Diego found no benefit — or a negative one.
  • A kroner figure for the breach you avoided. It requires guessing how often a click becomes a breach. Nobody knows that number, so we have not pretended to.

Want the real number for your case?

Book a free 30-minute L&D review with Thor. Bring your numbers — we will pressure-test them against what a programme like yours actually costs to build, and tell you honestly if digital is the wrong answer.

Book a free L&D review
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