Meeting cost calculator
Six people in a one-hour meeting at an average 65,000 salary costs about 212. Held once a week across 46 working weeks, that comes to 9,750, a budget line that appears in no budget. Halving the attendee list or cutting the slot to thirty minutes halves it exactly, and neither change needs approval, a supplier or a project.
Salary only. The fully loaded cost of an employee — taxes, benefits, equipment and workspace on top of pay — typically runs 1.25 to 1.5 times salary, so the real figure is higher than the one shown.
Meeting cost is attendees times duration times an hourly rate derived from salary. On the figures above, six people for an hour at a 65,000 average works out at 211.96, and repeating it once a week across 46 working weeks comes to 9,750 a year. That is salary only, so the real figure is higher.
How to calculate meeting cost
Two of the six inputs do more work than they look. Working weeks a year divides the salary into an hourly rate, so at 46 weeks the hourly cost is 65,000 ÷ 1,840, or 35.33. Divide by 52 weeks instead and it drops to 31.25, so the working-week version is 13% higher. Forty-six is the more defensible choice, because holiday and public holidays are paid but not worked, so an hour of somebody’s attention costs more than a naive fifty-two-week division suggests. The same field also counts the repeats in the annual row, and the two uses cancel exactly: 46 weeks and 52 weeks both give 9,750 a year, because a lower hourly rate is spread over proportionally more meetings. What the field really controls is the per-meeting figure, 211.96 against 187.50.
The larger caveat is what "cost" means here. Nobody is paid by the meeting. Cancelling the weekly hour releases no cash whatsoever; the salaries go out exactly as before. What the 9,750 measures is attention, priced at what the organisation pays for attention, and the correct reading is "this recurring meeting consumes as much of the payroll as a 9,750 line item would". Presenting it to a finance team as a saving invites the obvious rebuttal and loses the argument. Presenting it as the price of a standing decision usually wins it.
Salary is also only part of what an employee costs. Employer social contributions, pension, insurance, equipment, software seats and workspace all sit on top, and the multiple varies enough between jurisdictions that no single figure belongs in the tool: employer payroll charges alone differ by a factor of several between countries. The panel therefore reports salary cost and leaves the multiplier to you. Whatever your finance team uses for a fully loaded rate is the number to apply, and if nobody has one, applying anything between a quarter and a half again — 1.25 to 1.5 times salary — is closer than applying nothing.
The average hides the thing you most want to see. Six people averaging 65,000 might be six peers, or five people at 50,000 and one at 140,000; the total is similar and the decision is not. Whoever costs most usually contributes least to a status round, so a room priced on its average conceals exactly the attendee whose absence would save the most. When a meeting is genuinely under review, price the expensive attendees separately rather than smoothing them into the mean.
What the panel leaves out is also structural. Preparation is not in it, and for anything needing a deck the preparation frequently exceeds the meeting. Neither is the recovery cost of interruption: an hour booked in the middle of an afternoon does not remove one hour of focused work, it removes the afternoon, because what remains on either side is rarely long enough to start anything substantial. Both effects push the true figure up, and both argue for clustering meetings rather than spreading them.
Where the number does its best work is on the standing invitation nobody has revisited. A single meeting always looks affordable, and a year of the same meeting does not. Six people, one hour, weekly, is six person-hours a week and 276 person-hours a year; roughly seven working weeks of one person’s time, spent by a room that was invited once and never re-invited.
What people use it for
- Auditing a recurring meeting
- Deciding who genuinely needs to attend
- Making the case for an async update instead
- Costing a workshop or offsite
- Pricing a standing invitation nobody has reviewed in a year
- Comparing a thirty-minute slot against the calendar default of an hour
Questions
Attendees × hours × hourly cost, where hourly cost is annual salary divided by working weeks times hours a week. On the defaults above that is 65,000 ÷ 1,840, or 35.33 an hour.
Because holiday and public holidays are paid but not worked, so an hour of attention costs more than a fifty-two-week division implies. Fifty-two weeks gives 31.25 an hour where forty-six gives 35.33, which is 13% higher.
No, and the reason is worth a moment. The field divides the salary into an hourly rate and multiplies the meeting up into a year, so the two uses cancel: the annual row reads 9,750 at 46 weeks and 9,750 at 52. Only the per-meeting cost moves, from 211.96 to 187.50. Setting it to 52 says the meeting runs through the holidays as well, which is why the per-meeting figure comes out lower.
Loaded, if you want the real figure. This panel reports salary only, because the multiplier depends on your country and your benefits; take it from finance rather than from a rule of thumb.
No. Salaries are paid either way. The figure measures attention at the price the organisation pays for it, which is an argument about priority rather than a line in a cost-reduction plan.
Add it separately. For a meeting that needs a deck, preparation regularly costs more than the meeting, and it falls on one or two people rather than being shared.
In practice yes. A meeting dropped into the middle of a block leaves two fragments too short for concentrated work, which is a strong argument for clustering meetings rather than spacing them out.
Not always, but a slot length chosen by a calendar default rather than by the agenda usually is too long. Halving the slot halves this figure exactly.
A useful test: if an attendee’s absence would not change the outcome or the record, the invitation is a copy of the notes with extra steps.
No. Use the average of the people in this room. A mixed-seniority room also hides its expensive attendees inside the mean, so price those separately when the meeting is under review.
They cost the same and contribute less, which is the case for either making attendance optional and publishing notes, or making it required and expecting participation. Ambiguity costs full price for partial attention.
Yes, with travel and venue added by hand. The person-hours row is the useful one there, since it converts the event into a quantity of work not done.
No. Everything is computed in the page and no salary figure leaves your browser.