What your staff cost the ecosystem: a calculator

This is the calculator that goes with my Same Page post, The strategic implications of staff opportunity costs. The post explains the idea. This page lets you change the numbers and see what happens.

The defaults are the made-up figures from the post: a generic organisation in our ecosystem with five staff. Every number in a white box is editable, and the charts update as you type.

1. What each person costs the ecosystem

All figures are £k a year.

Opportunity cost:

roughly, how much an aligned funder would pay for the impact this person could produce if they weren't working for you.

Capacity-building value:

how much working for you adds to the rest of their career in the ecosystem, because they gain skills and context and become keener to take their next job in the ecosystem.

Net cost to the ecosystem:

salary + opportunity cost − capacity-building value.

2. What each person adds

Say the founder working alone would produce 100 impact points a year. How many points does each person add as they join, in the order below?

3. Returns

The left chart shows the impact points each person adds. The right chart divides those points by what the person costs the ecosystem, to give impact points per £100k of ecosystem resources. If someone's net cost is below zero, hiring them frees up ecosystem resources before you count any of their work, so there's no ratio to show. Their bar is marked "free", with the amount it frees up.

reset to the post's numbers