A paper published in the Harvard Business Review points out a new way to calculate economic profit that could be more appropriate for service firms and other people-intensive companies. Instead of focusing on investment and retum on investment, the focus is on employee productivity, in terms of both generating revenues and reducing costs. The approach is to first determine economic profit in the conventional way, except that we ignore taxes, so that economic proft is before tax, as follows: Economic profit = Operating profit Capital charge Assume the following information for a hotel chain that wishes to adopt the new method. The firm has $100 million in operating profit, has $1 billion in investment, and uses a cost of capital rate of 5%, so the capital charge is $50 million and the economic profit is $50 million, Relevant calculations are contained in Part 1 of the following schedule: Part 1: Economic Profit, (in thousands, except cast of capital rate) Revenue Operating costs: Personnel costs Other costs Operating profit Operating profit before personnel costs (OPP) Investinent (capital) Cost of capital, rate Capital charge Economic profit = Operating profit - Capital charge Part 2: Economie Profit Calculated Using Employee Productivity Number of employees Employee productivity: Operating profit before personnel cost per employee ($400,000/20,000) Capital chargo per employee ($50,000/10,000) Employee productivity Lesn personnel cost per enployee (5300,000/10,000) Econonic profit per enployen = Productivity = Cost Total economic profit, all enployees Notet All numbers in thousands except for number of employees The next step is to decompose economic profit using employce productivity to do this, we first determine.operating profit before personnel costs (OPBP): OPBP = Operating profit + Personnel costs $400,000=$100.000+$300,000 The next step is to decompose economic profit using employee productivity. To do this, we first determine operating profit before personnel costs (OPBP): OPBP = Operating profit + Personnel costs $400,000=$100,000+$300,000 Employee productivity can be determined by calculating OPBP less capital charge, per employee. For this example, because there are 10,000 employees, OPBP is $40,000 per employee and the capital charge is $5,000 per employee so that productivity is $35,000 per employee. The next step is to determine personnel cost per employee, $30,000, and subtract that from employee productivity to obtain economic profit per employee, $5,000 (.e, $35,000 - $30,000 ). Total economic profit for all employees is thus $5,000 10,000 , or $50 million, the same amount as determined in the conventional way. The value of the decomposition of economic profit into employee productivity and personnel costs per employee is that it provides measures that the hotel chain can benchmark to other hotel chains. It also provides a direct measure of the profit that is being generated per employee relative to the average personnel cost for each employee. Measures of revenue per employee and personnel cost per employee are widely used in the hospital, health and human services, and other people-oriented service industries. Required: Use the above approach and assume a chain of residential care facilities employs 15,000 people, has a cost of capital of 6%, and has the following information (000s): equired: se the above approach and assume a chain of residential care facilities employs 15,000 people, has a cost of capital of 6%, and has following information (000s): Determine the productivity per employee, personnel costs per employee, and economic profit per employee. (Enter your answers in thousands.)
