Productivity calculator

The productivity calculator works the rate in the order a planner needs it: the units the team finished divided by the hours you paid for gives output per labor hour, and inverting it gives the labor minutes each unit actually took. It then does the part a bare rate cannot, which is converting the volume your plan assumed into the hours that volume needs at the rate you just measured, the hours that is over or under what you already pay for, and the number of people that gap represents at this team's own hours each. Enter your own figures and it computes on the page, with no account.

The rate, and its inverse

Units finished divided by hours paid is output per labor hour, and it is the only figure here that is pure arithmetic rather than a planning choice. Hours paid divided by units is the same fact read the other way, shown here in minutes because that is the unit a team recognizes, and it is the more useful one for planning because it multiplies straight into a volume. Both are shown because teams argue about the first and plan with the second.

Cost per unit, so the rate has a currency

Multiplying the paid hours by your fully loaded hourly cost gives the labor cost of the period, and dividing that by the units gives labor cost per unit. This is the number that travels: a rate in units per hour means something only to the people who run the work, while a cost per unit can be put beside a price, a budget line or last year's figure without translation.

The plan's volume, priced in hours and in people

The assumed volume multiplied by the hours each unit took is the hours the plan needs at today's rate. Subtracting the hours you already pay for leaves a gap that is either overtime, a hire or a rate that has to change, and dividing that gap by the hours one person on this team works turns it into the headcount number the plan is really about. Nothing here assumes a rate you have not measured.

What it deliberately does not do

It applies no industry benchmark, because this site publishes none: every figure on the page comes from the five numbers you enter. It also makes no allowance for a learning curve, a seasonal mix or overtime lowering the rate, all of which are real and none of which can be guessed from five inputs. Measure a second period and compare, rather than asking one period to predict.