Summarise with AI
How to calculate FTE
The formula is:
FTE = total hours worked in the period ÷ full-time hours for that period
In Australia, full-time is ordinarily 38 hours a week under the National Employment Standards, so a week with 380 total staff hours is 10 FTE, whether those hours came from 10 people or 30.
Use the same period for both halves of the calculation. Mixing weekly hours with a monthly full-time figure is the most common arithmetic error here.
Why it matters in a casual workforce
A venue with 4 full-timers and 16 casuals averaging six hours a week has a headcount of 20 and an FTE closer to 6.5. Those are very different businesses for budgeting, productivity and staffing-ratio purposes.
Reporting headcount alone in a casual-heavy business consistently overstates capacity — and any per-head productivity figure derived from it will look far worse than reality.
Where FTE is the wrong measure
FTE is a capacity measure, so it misleads whenever the thing you are counting attaches to a person rather than to hours:
- Licence and certification tracking — 0.5 FTE still needs a whole licence
- Induction and policy acknowledgement
- Per-employee software licensing
- Turnover, which is calculated against average headcount
Report both numbers. Each answers a question the other cannot.
Key takeaways
- FTE = total hours ÷ full-time hours for the same period
- Full-time is ordinarily 38 hours a week under the NES
- FTE measures capacity; headcount measures people
- Anything that attaches to a person needs headcount, not FTE
RosterElf totals rostered hours by period, which is the input an FTE calculation needs.
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