GovernStack
📊Business

Meeting Cost Calculator — Real Cost of a Meeting

Every meeting has a price tag — most organisations just never calculate it. This free meeting cost calculator converts the number of attendees, their average salary, and meeting duration into a direct monetary figure, making the invisible cost of meetings visible. A one-hour weekly meeting with 10 people on £60,000 average salaries costs over £18,000 per year in salary alone. The tool also calculates the fully-loaded cost (including employer NI and overhead at 35%), the cost per minute, and the annual cost for recurring meetings. Use it to make a business case for better meeting hygiene, challenge unnecessary recurring meetings, or benchmark your organisation's meeting culture against the financial reality. Based on UK salary data and standard working hours (220 days × 8 hours = 1,760 hours per year).

6
150
Meeting Cost
£221.59
salary only
Fully Loaded
£299.15
inc. employer overhead
Per Minute
£3.69
Hourly / Person
£36.93
Annual Cost — Weekly
£11,522.73
direct salary cost per year
£15,555.68
fully loaded

Based on 1760 working hours per year (220 days × 8 hours). Salary cost only — does not include opportunity cost.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why should I care about the cost of meetings?

Research suggests UK professionals spend an average of 3–4 hours per week in meetings. At senior levels, this figure is significantly higher. A weekly one-hour all-hands with 20 people earning an average of £60,000 costs over £36,000 per year in salary alone — before factoring in opportunity cost.

What is "opportunity cost" in the context of meetings?

Opportunity cost is the value of what participants could have produced if they were not in the meeting. For revenue-generating roles, this is particularly significant. For senior decision-makers, the opportunity cost of a two-hour meeting may exceed the direct salary cost.

How can I reduce the cost of unnecessary meetings?

Practical steps include: applying the "could this be an email?" test, limiting attendees to only those who are essential, imposing hard time limits, requiring a pre-circulated agenda, and shifting status updates to async tools like Slack or shared documents.

How do I calculate the hourly cost of an employee?

Divide their annual gross salary by 1,760 (220 working days × 8 hours). For fully-loaded cost including employer NI, pension, and overhead, multiply by a factor of 1.3–1.7 depending on your organisation. This tool uses the simple salary-only calculation for clarity.

Is this calculator suitable for US dollar amounts?

This calculator uses UK working hour assumptions (8-hour days, 220 working days). You can enter any currency amount — just treat the output figure in your local currency. The calculation logic is currency-agnostic.

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