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2.3. Company & Management

2.3.4. Personnel costs

From an entrepreneur's point of view personnel costs not only consist of wage and salary costs They also include ancillary personnel costs in the form of the employer's contribution to social security. They also include the costs of setting up and maintaining the workplace. Depending on the basis of calculation in a company, these are recorded separately or included in the overhead costs. When financing start-ups, particular attention must be paid to identifying and financing investment costs for equipping the workplaces.

When determining remuneration, several operational and personal criteria must be taken into account. When setting up a company, regulations that are customary in the sector, collective agreements or local regulations should be taken into account in particular in order to be able to use competitive advantages.

  • Industry is the part of an economic sector that has developed special "rules of the game" in business transactions For example, the following can be distinguished: the automobile industry and within it the car dealers, the telecommunications industry and within it the large telecommunications providers, the telecom retailers, etc., the construction industry and within it the road builders, the building constructors, the construction companies that only build commercial real estate or only residential buildings.
  • Collective agreements are negotiated between organised workers (trade unions) and organised employers (employers' associations) They usually apply only to their members. If more than 50% of the member companies and members of an industry are organised, collective agreements can be declared generally binding by government decree. They then apply to all workers in an industry and must be respected.
  • Local regional differences and particularities in the market Different salaries are paid in metropolises, small towns or structurally weak areas. Purchasing power also varies in the regions.

In order to keep up with national and international competition in terms of personnel costs, every entrepreneur must seriously consider joining collective bargaining arrangements. Negotiating individual salaries at company level can bring cost advantages.

When calculating wages, the hourly wage is usually set as the basis of remuneration, for salaries the monthly salary and, more frequently for managers, the annual salary, plus performance-related components.

salaries can rise more in times of a shortage of skilled workers than in times of a surplus of skilled workers Wages and salaries move within a certain range within a sector. Local wages must be determined as part of the market analysis. Each employee must be integrated into the company organisation in the best possible way, tasks and goals must be defined as precisely as possible. Teams must be formed so that complex tasks or projects can be realised with the know-how of the individual specialists and managers. The "right" employees must be found and "correctly" paid. The achievement of goals must be motivated and controlled. This is done today with modern methods of management. Without permanent leadership of the employees, no company is successful.

One of the fundamental issues of management is to plan resource and personnel capacities. In this context, capacity planning is mostly based on flow planning, because all operational resources must be included in the utilisation considerations. The lower limits and the capacity peaks must be planned. Capacity planning is about the optimal combination and utilisation of operational possibilities.

From a business perspective, capacity planning must start with the customer. The question is what does the customer want and how can the products and services be offered to the customer in the best possible and most economical way.

·         Best possible means: best or a defined quality

·         Promptly means: immediately or by a certain date

·         Local means: at the client's home or where the client wants it.

·         Ambience means: with lots of service staff or spartanly simple

·         High-tech means: with the highest technological commitment and the latest

·         Price means: low-level or "money doesn't matter", it should be the best.

Depending on the customer's wishes and defined entrepreneurial requirements, there are quite different organisational and personnel capacities. These must be worked out and determined within the framework of the business plan.

In capacity planning, for example, the following resources must be combined according to economic aspects:

-       Space capacities: Commercial and private real estate, rental property, production rooms, sales rooms, parking spaces, room sizes, utilisation areas, rental periods, rental prices, etc.

-       Market capacities: Purchasing of goods locally or worldwide, delivery times, logistics, transport routes, customs duties, taxes, etc.

-       Organisational capacities: production with own employees, external services, production sizes, size of existing organisational units, delivery times, etc.

-       Personnel capacities: sole trader, number of employees, type and duration of contractual relationship, start and end of work, time of hiring, work peaks, etc.

With capacity planning, the minimum and maximum sales or turnover can be defined. For example, if a restaurant were to open only in the evening between 19.00 - 22.00, and had 20 seats, and the seats were only allocated once, the evening customer capacity would be equal to a maximum of 20, and a minimum of 0 if no guest came. If an evening meal including drinks cost €55, the maximum evening turnover would be equal to €1,100. The question remains, with what effort must and can the evening dinner be created by the restaurant? When it comes to the economic effort, all resources and the costs for it must be determined. Only then can it be decided whether the offer can generate a profit or a loss.