When a position sits vacant, it’s easy to focus on the money you’re not spending. No salary. No benefits. No additional employee on the payroll.

But an open position isn’t necessarily saving your organization money. In fact, it could be costing you in ways that are much harder to see.

Consider what happens to the work that employee would have been doing. It doesn’t simply disappear. Instead, it often gets distributed among other team members, who may already have full plates. For an insurance organization, that can have a ripple effect. Claims may take longer to process. Underwriters may have less time to devote to complex risks. Customer inquiries can pile up. Important projects get pushed to the side because employees are focused on keeping up with day-to-day responsibilities.

Then there’s the human cost. Asking employees to absorb additional responsibilities might work as a short-term solution. But when “short term” turns into several months, frustration and burnout can follow. Consider that 50% of employees in the U.S. and Canada experienced stress during a lot of the previous day, according to Gallup’s 2026 State of the Global Workplace report. And the last thing you want when you’re already understaffed is to lose another valuable employee.

That doesn’t mean every vacancy requires an immediate full-time hire.

Before automatically replacing an employee, take a closer look at the work itself. Do you need someone 40 hours a week? Is the need temporary? Could an experienced professional handle a specific function or backlog? Would additional support free your existing employees to concentrate on higher-value work?

This is where flexible staffing through an organization like WAHVE can provide a critical solution. WAHVE connects insurance organizations with experienced professionals who want to continue putting their decades of industry knowledge to work in flexible, remote roles. They can help fill staffing gaps, provide specialized expertise, and give overloaded teams some much-needed capacity—without necessarily adding another traditional full-time position.

As you evaluate an open position, don’t look only at what it costs to fill it. Ask another question: “What is it costing us to leave it open?”