{"id":7237,"date":"2023-04-26T13:46:50","date_gmt":"2023-04-26T11:46:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.peopleplan.eu\/the-5-most-important-success-factors-in-personnel-cost-controlling\/"},"modified":"2023-04-27T13:18:37","modified_gmt":"2023-04-27T11:18:37","slug":"the-5-most-important-success-factors-in-personnel-cost-controlling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peopleplan.eu\/en\/the-5-most-important-success-factors-in-personnel-cost-controlling\/","title":{"rendered":"The 5 Most Important Success Factors in Personnel Cost Controlling"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
How can companies use personnel cost controlling to reliably plan, measure and manage workforce costs despite inflation and a shortage of skilled workers?<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
In Germany, Austria, Switzerland and many other European countries, the cost of wages and salaries in companies is by far the largest cost item. This applies in particular to the service sector. This calls for a functioning personnel cost controlling system in which the planning, control and management of costs must be the main tasks. In the end, the important questions are: In which departments can I afford how many additional employees as a company, or is there even a budget for this? What wage cost increases are realistic and affordable? Collective wage agreements also have a massive impact on personnel cost controlling, so that these must always be calculated in detail in order to continue to operate economically in the following year. Personnel cost controlling is the area of human resources controlling that deals exclusively with the planning, measurement and control of relevant financial key figures – personnel costs.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
Three central parameters are of importance in personnel cost controlling:<\/p>\n
Headcount or “heads” is the number of employees in total or as the sum of employees in individual cost centers, branches or national companies. For personnel cost controlling, the key figure plays a role in personnel cost planning when employees are hired or fired. The “headcount” parameter can also be used in scenario comparisons or change analyses to quickly identify the areas in which personnel need to be increased or reduced.<\/p>\n
In many companies, the proportion of part-time employees is now 30-40% and rising.<\/p>\n
In order to establish comparability of workforce costs and benefits, all part-time employees must be converted to full-time equivalents, because otherwise apples would be compared with oranges. Employees who work part-time are not comparable in terms of workload and costs to full-time employees who perform exactly the same job.<\/p>\n
For this reason, full-time employees are set as a reference value of 1 FTE, and the employment level of part-time employees is set as a proportional FTE. For the calculation of FTE in total, the percentages of part-time employees are added together.<\/p>\n
Particularly due to the increasing development in the part-time sector, personnel cost controlling becomes more comprehensible and controllable with the FTE key figure.<\/p>\n
Workforce costs are at the heart of personnel cost controlling, because their planning largely determines the success of a company’s economic development in the medium and long term.<\/p>\n
In addition to fixed cost components such as monthly salary, social security contributions and payroll taxes, workforce costs also include variable components such as bonuses, Christmas bonuses and vacation pay.<\/p>\n
The workforce costs for employees covered by collective bargaining agreements are derived from corresponding pay scales.<\/p>\n
Since the calculation is complex and also changes on a monthly basis, it makes sense to always have the ACTUAL workforce costs from the relevant payroll systems available for calculating the planned costs. This makes it very easy to create forecasts, PLAN costs and other scenarios.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
In order to be able to carry out personnel cost controlling accurately, and to provide reliable data, accuracy is required first and foremost. It is, of course, possible to carry out blanket personnel planning if you do not even know what costs additional employees will cause. In most cases, however, reference values do exist. That is, there are already employees who hold a similar position from which projected costs can be derived. In general, only employee-specific planning can be the basis for calculating dependent variables such as SI contributions, taxes and bonuses. Granularity does not provide blanket planning.<\/p>\n
In uncertain times, companies are often confronted with making decisions for which no figures are yet available. While a reference value is available for the departure of employees, entire departments or the change in the employment level, this is not always possible for the planned addition of individual persons or teams. Especially when inflation fluctuates strongly or the skills are not yet available in the company, it can make sense to work with a blanket action plan. In that case, you would fill the vacancies with a comparative value that is not 100% accurate, but an estimate.<\/p>\n
In general, for all key figures on headcount, FTE and costs, the historical values are already available in the payroll system. So there is a lot to be said for using the ACTUAL data and basing personnel cost planning on it, since you only have to define the deviation from the ACTUAL values in planning. Via interfaces to various HR systems, it is now possible to use the real-time data as a planning basis for employees. Such interfaces are available for HR systems such as SAP HCM, SAP SuccessFactors, Personio, Workday, DATEV and many more. But even if such interfaces are not available, it is usually possible to perform personnel cost controlling on a regular basis using Excel imports.<\/p>\n
In terms of saving time, it is recommended that every HR planner work with ACTUAL data from integrated HR systems.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
Scenario comparisons are a useful tool for looking at and comparing different projected development possibilities. However, it is important to note that as humans we often think linearly and feel overwhelmed with more than 4 variables. It is therefore important to ensure comparability in our decisions and predictions.<\/p>\n
We should be aware that our decisions are rarely fully rational and are often influenced by emotions and personal experiences. One way of improving our decision-making is to examine different scenarios and compare them in personnel cost controlling in terms of headcount, FTE and costs.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t