There are four key benchmarks for the cost of
payroll:
Cost per EmployeeCost per PaymentPayments per EmployeeEmployees/Payroll staff FTE.
All four are important since an authority paying
all staff monthly should have a lower cost per
employee, but is likely to show a higher cost
per payment (payslip). Members can select
comparisons with other authorities having a
similar mix of employees and the club also
provides an analysis of cost per ‘equivalent
monthly’ employee, which attaches different
weights to weekly paid, monthly paid and
pensioners. A further analysis takes into account
positive and negative input into the payroll
system.
The other complication with benchmarking payroll
is to ensure that the comparisons are reasonably
‘like-for-like’. For this purpose the club has
developed a detailed definition of what does and
does not count as core payroll work. Members are
then asked to deduct the cost of non-core work,
and to add in their best estimate of the cost of
core work undertaken in other departments – data
input being the main example.
November 2009 |