How much are benefits worth

The how much are benefits worth worksheet answers the question an HR or finance partner is asked every autumn and can rarely answer on the spot: what does the package cost per employee, and what is it as a share of pay. It takes the employer's own six numbers, the headcount enrolled, average base salary, the employer share of health premium, the retirement contribution rate, everything else per head and the administration cost, and returns the cost per employee a year and a month, the same figure as a percent of salary, the fully loaded cost of an employee, the total across the group, and the share of the bill that health cover and administration each take. It also prices one decision directly: what one more percent of salary in retirement contribution costs the whole group. Enter your own figures and it computes on the page, with no account.

Per employee first, because that is the number people argue about

Everything here is built on one sum: employer health premium share, plus salary times the contribution rate, plus the per-head cost of everything else, plus administration. That is the cost per employee a year, and dividing by twelve gives the figure a budget holder recognizes. It is deliberately not an average from a survey, because a survey figure cannot be defended in a room where somebody knows what your renewal was.

As a share of salary, because that is how it is benchmarked

Expressing the same total as a percent of base salary is what makes it comparable year to year and across roles, and it is how the figure will be quoted back at you. Watch it rather than the absolute number: a benefits bill that grows with the payroll is doing what it should, and one whose share of salary climbs is telling you the renewal or the package changed, which are two very different conversations.

Where the money actually is

The health and administration shares are printed because they are almost always misjudged in opposite directions. Employer health premium is usually the large majority of the bill, which means the renewal decides the line and the perks do not; administration is usually a low single-digit share, which means cutting it saves little and is rarely where the savings are. Knowing both stops a benefits review spending its effort on the wrong line.

The price of one more point

The last output takes the retirement contribution rate up by one percentage point and prices it across the whole group, because that is the form the decision actually arrives in. It is a clean number, salary times headcount divided by a hundred, and having it on the page turns a question that usually gets deferred into one that can be answered in the meeting.