Faster to onboard, but employees leave sooner. Slower to onboard, but they stay. What the retention numbers and rotation costs actually show.
The Balkan seasonal model and the Philippine RWR route get compared constantly, usually in terms of speed: the Balkan route moves in weeks to months, the Philippine route in months. That’s true, but it’s only half the picture — the other half is what happens after someone starts.
Average retention on the Philippine route runs 18 to 24 months. Balkan seasonal hires typically stay 4 to 8 months — which isn’t a flaw in the model, it’s largely how seasonal work is structured. But it means the two routes solve different problems, and comparing them on speed alone misses the actual cost driver: how often you’re rehiring.
Run the numbers over a 24-month window for a team of 5 positions, and the rotation cost gap becomes concrete. Seasonal Balkan-style rotation over that period costs roughly €25,000 in replacement and onboarding overhead; the seasonal route (repeated short-cycle hiring) runs closer to €37,500. The Philippine route, over the same 24 months, runs €0 to €2,500 — because most hires are still in place. Each individual replacement, when one is needed, costs around €2,500.
Neither model is “wrong.” If you need six weeks of extra hands for a harvest or a seasonal peak, the Philippine RWR timeline doesn’t fit your problem — the Balkan seasonal route does. If you’re trying to permanently fill a role that keeps turning over every few months, the maths above is the argument for looking at a longer onboarding process in exchange for a team that’s still there two years later.
The honest comparison isn’t “which is better” — it’s “which problem are you actually solving.” We ask that question on every discovery call before we recommend a route, because the wrong answer to it is the single biggest reason recruitment budgets get wasted.