| > I'm not advocating what you are suggesting. I agree that workers should be paid extra for working additional hours. Ah I'm sorry if I was unclear with that one. I'm not suggesting that you think people should all be paid standard regular rates irrespective of time. I meant that if you use a lump sum "average per employee pay slip" number you're not taking in to account those details. With full-time equivalent, if George works 60 hours for example he counts as 1.5FTE. After-hours work is harder to quantify, but usually employment agreements similarly put extra value on those hours that can be translated back to FTE. This seems the sanest and most accurate way to figure it out. The number actual people earn per week is a misleading figure. I think you might agree with me here, because you said "Then if that amount can be justified by unsociable hours, extra hours, or whatever, then that's fine" and FTE is exactly the way to do that! I just came across this four corners episode from 2016 which has the quote "According to Holden management 90% of the workers earn between 43k and 55k per year" (https://youtu.be/CIRuU8qot3s?t=33m08s) Straight from the horses mouth, as it were. Though of course .5FTE @ $43k is $86k FTE (for example) so we're back at the problem of standardization... |
However, I think while it would be revealing in some areas, it would mask other problems.
For instance, if you look purely at the FTE, you wouldn't see that George had worked 60 hours. That's a problem. Why did George work 60 hours? Was he really productive for all of that time or is he gaming the overtime system by deliberately doing less work within normal hours so that he has to do overtime to complete his scheduled work.