Modelling Labour Cost
The Cost tab calculates what your schedule costs. It converts your shift plan into a weekly labour cost figure, breaks down the components, and shows how you track against budget. The most important output is cost per contact — the true measure of your operation's labour efficiency.
Setting Up the Cost Model
Before the Cost tab shows meaningful numbers, configure your cost model in Settings → Cost Model.
Hourly rate
The base hourly wage per agent — the amount you pay the agent before employer costs. To convert an annual salary: salary ÷ 52 ÷ contracted hours per week. For example, £28,000 per year at 37.5 hours per week = £14.36 per hour.
On-cost uplift
The extra cost of employing someone beyond their base wage, expressed as a percentage. This is consistently underestimated by managers and is the most important field to set correctly.
On-cost typically includes:
- Employer National Insurance: ~13.8% in the UK for earnings above the secondary threshold
- Employer pension contributions: minimum 3% under auto-enrolment
- Holiday pay loading: 5.6 weeks' statutory leave ÷ 46.4 working weeks = ~12%
- Other benefits: private medical, life assurance, etc.
A realistic on-cost uplift for a UK contact centre is typically 22–28%. Use 25% as a starting point if you do not have a more precise figure from your finance team.
| Hourly rate | On-cost uplift | Loaded hourly rate (true cost) |
|---|---|---|
| £12.00 | 25% | £15.00 |
| £15.00 | 25% | £18.75 |
| £18.00 | 25% | £22.50 |
| £20.00 | 25% | £25.00 |
Role Rates
If your team has multiple pay grades, configure role rates in Settings → Cost Model:
- Click Add role.
- Enter a role name that matches the role names assigned to shifts (e.g., "Agent", "Senior Agent", "Team Lead").
- Enter the hourly rate for that role.
When you assign a role to a shift template in the Schedule tab, the Cost tab uses that role's rate. Shifts without a role use the default hourly rate.
Shift Premiums
Many operations pay a premium for working unsocial hours. Configure these in Settings:
- Night premium — applied to shifts starting at or after 20:00 or running overnight. Entered as a percentage uplift (e.g., 20% means the loaded rate is multiplied by 1.20 for those shifts).
- Weekend premium — applied to shifts on Saturday and Sunday.
These premiums apply only to qualifying shifts — they do not affect day-time weekday shifts.
Reading the Cost Output
Weekly labour cost
Total scheduled agent-hours × loaded hourly rate (base + on-cost + any applicable premiums). This is the true weekly cost of your schedule.
Cost per contact
Weekly labour cost ÷ total weekly contact volume (from the forecast). This is the single most useful cost efficiency metric for an operations team.
Why cost per contact matters more than total cost: it normalises for volume. A week where you spend £50,000 handling 10,000 calls has a cost per contact of £5.00. A week where you spend £60,000 handling 15,000 calls has a cost per contact of £4.00. The second week costs more in absolute terms but is more efficient.
Typical cost per contact benchmarks:
| Channel | Low (efficient) | Typical | High (review needed) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inbound voice | £2.50–£4.00 | £4.00–£7.00 | > £8.00 |
| Live chat | £1.50–£3.00 | £3.00–£5.00 | > £6.00 |
| £2.00–£4.00 | £4.00–£8.00 | > £10.00 |
These are rough benchmarks. Cost per contact varies enormously by AHT, pay rates, and what is included in scope. Use them as a sanity check, not an absolute target.
Monthly and annual projections
The cost model projects weekly cost to monthly and annual figures. These are simple multiplications (weekly × 52 for annual) and do not account for variable volume or planned headcount changes. Use them as order-of-magnitude guides for budget planning.
Budget tracking
If you entered a weekly budget target in Settings, the Cost tab shows a budget bar:
- Green — within budget
- Amber — within 105% of budget
- Red — above 120% of budget
When over budget, Turnella suggests which levers to pull: reduce headcount in low-priority intervals, reduce shift premiums by changing shift times, or revisit the SL target to reduce the base requirement.
Cost Sensitivity Table
The sensitivity table shows how weekly cost changes at different hourly rates — useful for modelling the impact of a pay increase or comparing your team's cost against a contractor or BPO rate.