Four tips to calculate your personnel costs

Calculating personnel costs is not a simple task. Do you already have an idea of your expenses for next year? It's high time to do something about it, because the deadline for submitting your 2022 budget is fast approaching. We'd like to get you started with four tips, so you don't forget anything when setting your staff budget, and don't get any unexpected surprises.

Tip 1: Take the evolution of wages into account

Agreements concerning wages, premiums and supplements are usually set out in a collective labour agreement (CLA). The CLAs and the index adjustment are therefore important variables to take into account when calculating your personnel budget. Just like the seniority of your employees.

Small business? Check whether you are entitled to social security discounts. When you first recruit, you are completely exempt from basic employer contributions, without any time limit. This will save you 25% of the monthly labour costs. You can read more about it here.

Tip 2: Calculate your staff growth

Do you foresee any new recruits? Then be sure to include those costs. To determine the gross salary of a new employee, you must consider the following:

• their experience;
• their status (employee, worker or student worker);
• the job level;
• the CLAs and sectoral agreements within your joint committee;
• the agreements on remuneration within your own company;
• the number of working hours;
• the wage agreements you make with your prospective colleague.

Don't forget that you have to pay at least the minimum wage. You can read how much this is in Trefzeker's Sector Guide.

Tip 3: Anticipate the impact of any absence

Are there pregnancies coming up? Do some employees take parental leave? Will your employee change from a full-time to part-time schedule, or vice versa? This all has implications for labour costs. Allow for this in your budget. Are people leaving? Then budget their costs only for the necessary months.

Tip 4: Activate the Acerta budget tool

It's not simple. Or is it? For a complete and realistic calculation of your personnel budget, you must consider all wage components that apply within your sector and company and are also geared to your (future) employees. And that is very easy to calculate when you use the Budget tool from Acerta.