Personnel cost planning

Personnel cost planning is very important in personnel planning and thus also in the entire corporate planning. Personnel costs include all costs that are paid directly or indirectly to employees.

Definition / explanation

Personnel costs represent a large part of a company's costs and are determined by personnel cost planning. Personnel cost planning is used for preliminary calculation and cost control of internal costs.

On the basis of already existing data and the future personnel costs calculated by a planning tool (which can be influenced, for example, by tariff adjustments or increased / reduced need for personnel), the personnel costs are extrapolated for the planning year that has not yet been billed.

Basic personnel costs and additional personnel costs

A basic distinction is made between two types of personnel cost planning, basic personnel costs and additional personnel costs.

Base personnel costs - The basic personnel costs are all costs that are directly related to the provision of services. These include, for example, lead wages, performance and premium wages.

Additional personnel costs - The additional personnel costs are all costs that exceed the basic personnel costs. There are statutory additional personnel costs such as the employer's share for health or pension insurance, collectively agreed additional personnel costs such as vacation or Christmas bonuses and voluntary additional personnel costs such as work clothes, company vehicles or further training measures.

Planning of staff costs

For personnel cost planning, the number of employees is first determined; this is done using the personnel plan. Existing positions (filled or not filled), new positions and positions to be cut are taken into account. This also includes positions for temporary workers, interns or trainees.

The wages or salaries of the employees are adjusted in the personnel cost planning and, if necessary, salaries for future positions are estimated or determined by the collective agreement.

In order to be able to calculate the personnel costs as precisely as possible, some factors must be taken into account for the planning period:

• Fee regulations
• Changes to the employment contract
• Changes in working hours
• Tariff changes
• different wage types

The different wage types are combined into groups, since taking all individual wage types into account would be very confusing. These are then assigned to the various types of costs.

Furthermore, the additional personnel costs must be taken into account in the planning. Here employer contributions for statutory health insurance, long-term care insurance, unemployment insurance and pension insurance are due. In addition, Christmas or vacation pay and overtime pay as well as weekend or night allowances for the individual positions must be taken into account.

With the help of this data, the personnel costs can be extrapolated for the planning year. In order to check the plausibility of this planning and determine whether it is realistic, the costs determined are compared with previous data and analyzed.

Summary