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Free tools for HR leaders

Can I afford to hire?
calculator (Australia)

Put the fully loaded cost of a new role against what it brings in, and see whether the numbers work before you post the job.

Your numbers

Your estimate of what the role brings in or saves
Fully loaded annual cost
 
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How much does an employee really cost beyond salary?

Once superannuation, payroll tax, workers' compensation and leave and other on-costs are added, the fully loaded cost is typically 25 to 40% above base salary in Australia. A $90,000 salary often costs well over $115,000 a year to employ.

How we calculated this

We load the base salary with superannuation at 12%, payroll tax at your state's headline rate, an allowance for workers' compensation and a provision for leave to get the fully loaded annual cost. Contribution is the revenue or savings you expect the role to drive, multiplied by the gross margin on it. Contribution minus loaded cost is the annual surplus or shortfall. The ramp-up figure prices the months to full productivity at roughly half output, because almost nobody contributes fully from week one. The number stands for whether the role pays for itself in a normal year. The working, the assumptions and the sources are below.

New to the term? Read the plain-English definition of the superannuation guarantee in the HR Glossary.

Your working
Assumptions
  • Contribution is your estimate and it is by far the biggest driver. If the revenue figure is a hope, the surplus is a hope. Use the conservative case: what a competent hire, not an exceptional one, delivers in a full year.
  • On-costs follow the true cost of an employee calculator: super at 12%, payroll tax at the state headline rate (which only applies above the state threshold and is tiered in some states, so under-threshold employers overstate it), workers' compensation at 1.5% against a national standardised average of 1.34% of payroll, and leave and other on-costs at 8.5%. Recruitment, onboarding and equipment are excluded, so add your one-off cost per hire in year one.
  • Ramp-up assumes half output for the months you entered, capped at 12. Some roles ramp faster; sales and senior roles often ramp slower and never in a straight line. It is a budgeting allowance rather than a forecast.
  • The surplus is a steady-state year. Year one is the surplus minus ramp-up minus recruitment. A role that clears its cost in steady state can still lose money in year one, which is fine if year two is planned for and a problem if it is not.
Sources

What to do about it

Affordability is a decision about the year the role does not go to plan. In the plan year, most roles clear their cost. These steps are for whoever is building the case for the hire, whether that is the manager who needs the person or the HR partner writing it up for finance.

1

Run it twice more: at 70% of your contribution estimate, and with the ramp-up doubled

If the role still clears its cost, hire with confidence. If it only works at your best-case number, you are not deciding to hire. You are deciding to hope.

2

Add the one-off costs to year one

Recruitment (the agency fee or your own cost per hire), onboarding, equipment and licences. Put year one and steady state side by side on the same page. Finance will ask, so it is better that the answer is already there.

3

Name the number that says it worked

Write down what the role has to have delivered by month 12 for the contribution estimate to have been true, and who signs off that it did. A role costed to the dollar and never evaluated is how the next headcount request gets refused.

4

Agree the fallback before you post the ad

If contribution is running at half by month nine, what happens: extend the ramp, change the role, move the person, or part ways? Deciding that now, in writing, turns a hard conversation later into a decision already made.

5
Where a tool helps

Price the wrong hire, because it costs the loaded figure twice

A poor fit who leaves at month nine costs nine months of loaded salary, the ramp-up you never got back, the manager time spent on it and the recruitment all over again. Getting the person right is the largest single lever on whether this role is affordable, larger than the state or the margin.

Step 5 is what makes
the numbers true.

Compono Hire is an applicant tracking system (ATS) that measures fit before you make the offer. It handles the process an ATS is meant to handle (posting, pipeline, scheduling, offers) and adds the read most of them leave to instinct: a validated work personality and culture fit score for every candidate, produced the same way each time and set beside the skills screen.

That is step 5 handled before the offer, where it is cheapest. The surplus above assumes the person you hire stays and ramps. Hire is how you improve the odds that they do, and cut the risk of paying the loaded figure twice, which is the difference between a role that clears its cost and one that becomes the most expensive line in the budget.

See how it works
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Common questions

How do I know if I can afford to hire someone?

Compare the fully loaded annual cost of the role against the revenue or savings it will realistically drive, allowing for a ramp-up period before full productivity. If the contribution clears the loaded cost with room to spare, the role pays for itself.

What is the ramp-up cost?

Almost no new hire performs at full output from the start. This tool assumes roughly half productivity for the first few months, which is the value not yet delivered while the person gets up to speed. Faster, better onboarding shrinks it.

Does this include recruitment cost?

This calculator focuses on the ongoing cost of the role against its return. Recruitment and onboarding are one-off costs on top, which you can estimate with the Cost per Hire and Cost of Onboarding calculators.

This page is general information, not legal advice. We check figures annually and update them on a best-efforts basis, but employment rules change and we cannot promise everything here is current or complete. Before you act on it, confirm the detail with the Fair Work Ombudsman or your own adviser. Last reviewed July 2026.

Next step

Business case

Build the business case

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Cost per hire calculator

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Run it next →HR Glossary

The superannuation guarantee

The plain-English definition, with the calculators and rules that sit around it.

Read the definition →Talk to us

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