Findability calculator

Findability value calculator | Content Formula

Business case tool

What is time spent finding things costing you?

Reducing the time employees spend hunting for information is one of the most common success criteria our clients set. This works out what that time is worth in your business, so you have a number to take to your board. Every figure below is yours to set, not ours to assume.

Your figures

Currency
2,500

Everyone who needs to find information to do their job.

5035,000
15 min

Per person. Searching, asking a colleague, or rebuilding something that already existed. Start low if you are not sure.

5 min60 min
£30

Fully loaded: salary, employer contributions and overhead.

1590
33%

Nobody removes all of it. A third is a defensible planning assumption. Set it lower if you would rather present a conservative case.

10%60%

Based on a 1,750-hour working year, which allows for leave and public holidays, and 52 weeks of the estimate above.

What that adds up to

18.6 people, full time, doing nothing but looking for things

That is the equivalent headcount tied up across a year.

Hours lost across the business each year

32,500

13 hours per person

Value of that time

£975,000

At the hourly rate you set

Capacity released at your recovery rate

£321,750

Recovering 33% of the time lost

Hours given back each year

10,725

6.1 people, full time

Read this before you present it

This is capacity released, not cash saved. Recovered hours only become money if that time goes to work with a return attached, so present it as capacity you can redeploy rather than a cost you can cut. Your finance team will ask, and having the answer ready is the difference between a case that lands and one that stalls.

It is a directional model built on your own estimate, not an audited saving. Its job is to show whether the problem is worth investigating properly.

Take this to your board

A short summary you can paste into an email or a paper. It states the assumptions openly, because a case that shows its workings is harder to dismiss.

Talk to a consultant Copied
Content Formula · digital workplace consultancy since 2005 How a discovery establishes the real figure →

About the calculator

Time spent finding information rarely shows up as a line item, so it never gets fixed. This calculator turns a rough estimate of that time into a number your board will take seriously.

Enter a few details about your organisation to see the hours lost searching, asking, or recreating work, the equivalent full-time headcount tied up, what that time is worth at your own rates, and a conservative estimate of what’s realistically recoverable.

Built to be forwarded to whoever holds the budget, with the assumptions stated openly.

How it works

The calculator multiplies your employee count by the minutes each person loses per week, across a 52-week year, then converts that into a financial figure using the hourly rate or salary you set.

A recovery rate is applied on top, because no organisation eliminates all of this time. The default sits at a third, a defensible planning assumption you can adjust to present a more conservative or more ambitious case.

This is capacity released, not cash saved. The output is directional, designed to establish whether the problem is worth investigating properly, not to serve as an audited figure.