Productivity and operations
Employee productivity calculator
Put a number on the time and money that manual, repetitive work costs your team.
Estimate how many hours a week and how much employment cost could be freed up by automating part of a manual task, and what that equals in full-time roles.
You will need
- How many people do the task
- Their hourly employment cost
- Hours each spends on it per week
- A realistic share that could be automated
What you enter
- Employees doing the task – How many people spend time on the manual or repetitive work.
- Hourly employment cost – Hourly wage plus superannuation, leave loading, payroll tax and workers compensation. Roughly 1.25 × the hourly wage if you are not sure.
- Hours per person per week on the task – Data entry, copying between systems, chasing approvals, manual reports and similar work.
- Share of that time that could be automated – Be realistic: 30–60% is common for well-defined admin tasks. 100% is rare.
- Working weeks per year – Weeks each person actually works in a year.
How it is calculated
Hours saved per week = Employees × Hours per week × Automation share. Cost saved per week = Hours saved per week × Hourly employment cost. Yearly figures = Weekly figures × Working weeks per year. Full-time equivalent = Hours saved per year ÷ (38 hours × Working weeks per year).
Assumptions
- Every person spends the same hours on the task and earns the same hourly cost (use averages).
- Freed-up time is valued at the full employment cost. It only becomes a cash saving if you reduce hours or avoid a hire; otherwise it is capacity for other work.
- A full-time week is 38 hours, per the National Employment Standards.
Limitations
- It is an estimate of capacity, not a guaranteed saving. It ignores the cost of the automation itself: use the ROI calculator for that.
- Some time is still needed to handle exceptions, check outputs and maintain the automation.