Question

The manager of the Personnel Department at City Enterprises has been reading about time-driven ABC and wants to apply it to her department. She has identified four basic activities her employees spend most of the their time on: Interviewing, Hiring, Assessment, and Separation Processing. The department employs 15 staff who perform these activities. The manager provides the following estimates for the amount of time it takes to complete each of these activities:

• Interviewing: 55 minutes.

• Hiring: 70 minutes.

• Assessment: 95 minutes.

• Separation Processing: 100 minutes.

Employees in Personnel work 45-hour weeks with four weeks for vacation. Of the 45 hours, five are reserved for administrative tasks, training, and so on. The costs of the Personnel Department, including any allocated costs from other staff functions, are $982,000. During the year, Personnel conducted 2,200 interviews, made 575 hires, made 5,000 assessments, and had 300 separations.

Required:

a. What is the cost per minute for activities in Personnel? (Round your answer to 2 decimal places.)

b. What is the cost of interviewing and hiring one employee? (Round your intermediate calculations and final answers to 2 decimal places.)

c. How many minutes of unused capacity did Personnel have for the year?

d. What was the cost of the unused capacity in Personnel? (Round your intermediate calculations to 2 decimal places.)

Answer 1

a.	Total costs of the Personnel Department=$ 982000
	Total hours in the personnel department=45 hours=45*60=2700 minutes
	Cost per minute for activities in Personnel=982000/2700=$ 363.70
b.	Cost of interviewing and hiring one employee=Total time spent in interviewing and hiring*Cost per minute
	Total time spent in interviewing and hiring=55+70=125 minutes
	Cost of interviewing and hiring one employee=125*363.70=$ 45462.5
c.	Unused capacity in minutes=Minutes reserved for administrative activities=5*60=300 minutes
d.	Cost of unused capacity=Unused capacity in minutes*Cost per minute=300*363.70=$ 109110