Productive capacity calculator
How many hours does your team actually work in a year? Enter contracted hours, bank holidays, leave entitlement, and typical sick and training days. See productive hours per FTE, total team capacity, and — optionally — cost per productive hour.
Workforce
Absence (days per FTE per year)
Results
Annual days breakdown — per FTE
Productive days / FTE
214 days
of 260 contracted
Productive hours / FTE
1,605 hrs
≈ 4.1 productive weeks
Total productive hours
80,250 hrs
across 50 FTE
Implied annual absence
17.7%
46 absent days / FTE
Labour cost (optional)
This model covers year-level capacity — contracted days minus absence. It does not include within-shift shrinkage (breaks, coaching, admin, inbound adherence), which typically reduces available hours by a further 20–35% per shift. Use the shrinkage calculator alongside this to get from contracted FTE to actual seated agents. Sick-day estimates are historical averages — high Bradford Factor scores indicate intermittent absence that inflates effective shrinkage beyond the day-count used here.
How this calculator works
Productive capacity vs shrinkage
Shrinkage is applied within a shift — it converts seated requirement to scheduled headcount by accounting for breaks, team meetings, coaching, and unavoidable admin. Productive capacity is a year-level measure — it converts contracted FTE to actual working days after leave and absence. You need both to budget accurately: productive capacity for annual planning, shrinkage for intraday scheduling.
Cost per productive hour
Your agents’ hourly rate is charged against every contracted hour, including those spent on bank holidays and leave (which are paid but not worked). The true cost of having someone available to handle a call is the fully-loaded annual cost divided by the productive hours they deliver. This number is typically 15–25% higher than the contracted hourly rate and is what you should use to calculate cost per contact and staffing ROI.
What counts as absence?
This calculator covers year-level absence: statutory and public bank holidays, paid annual leave, average sick days (use a 3-year rolling average rather than last year’s figure), and planned development or training days. It does not include the within-shift time for breaks, team huddles, or shrinkage — those are separate and typically add another 20–30% on top.
Typical benchmarks
A UK full-time agent (37.5 hrs, 5 days) with 8 bank holidays, 25 days leave, 8 sick days, and 5 training days delivers around 1,600 productive hours per year — roughly 82% of contracted hours. Combined with 25% in-shift shrinkage, actual customer-handling time is closer to 1,200 hours. EU and US benchmarks vary; key inputs differ by jurisdiction and employer policy.
Two-step capacity calculation
Annual productive capacity and intraday shrinkage answer different questions. To go from contracted FTE to actual available agents in a given interval:
- Year-level (this calculator): Contracted FTE × productive fraction = effective FTE available on any given working day.
- Intraday (shrinkage): Apply shrinkage to convert scheduled agents to seated agents for each interval.
- Service level (Erlang C): Use the Erlang C calculator on the seated requirement to find the minimum agents for your SL target.
Need annual headcount projections with attrition and ramp?
This calculator shows capacity. Turnella connects it to a 12-month hiring plan that accounts for attrition drain, new-hire ramp productivity, and rolling staffing forecasts so you can plan the year — not just this quarter.