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How to Calculate Man Hours

By C.Taylor, eHow Contributor
updated: November 17, 2010

Calculating total man hours for a given period.

Calculating the number of man hours is the first step in determining your employee costs for a
certain period. This is useful in determining project costs, so that you can quote a fair, but profitable,
price for a job. Calculating man hours is also useful in determining your total employee expenditure
for a given year or to find ways to improve efficiency of yourbusiness plan. When calculating man
hours, you will total together all the hours each employee works.
Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions
1. 1
Determine the length of time for which you wish to calculate the total number of man hours. This might be
time allocated for a given project, quarterly work period or the total number of hours for the entire year.

2. 2
Determine the number of work days in that period. As an example, suppose you had a 10 week project where
each worker would work for five days per week. Five days per week for 10 weeks would total 50 days per
employee.

3. 3
Determine the total number of hours worked per employee by multiplying the number of hours per day by the
number of days worked. If each employee in the example worked eight hours per day for 50 days, then the
total number of hours per employee would be 400 hours.
4. 4
Calculate total man hours by multiplying the number of hours per employee by the total number of employees.
Suppose you had 20 employees working on the job, each working 400 hours, then the total number of man
hours would be 8,000 hours.
References
 Chron: How to Calculate Man Hours
 EC&M Electrical Resource: Calculating Your True Labor Cost

How Do I Calculate Minutes Into a Fraction of

an Hour?
By Shahana Dattagupta, eHow Contributor
updated: January 7, 2010

There are 60 minutes in an hour. This is the simple, man-made concept to keep in mind when
calculating minutes as a fraction of an hour. The best way to understand the calculation of minutes
as fractions of an hour is to first visualize some common hour-fractions which we see every day.

Visualizing the Fraction

1. Visualize the face of a clock as a pie, seeing the quarters that mark 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 45
minutes, and 60 minutes in your mind's eye. When you imagine the 15 minute mark, what do you
see? It is a quarter (or 1/4) of a pie! Thus, 15 minutes equate to 1/4 hour. Now, if you further halved
the quarter pie, what would you get? Yes, one-eighth of a pie. Thus, seven-and-a-half minutes
equate to one-eighth (1/8) of an hour.

Understanding the Unit

2. To calculate fractions of hours for other numbers of minutes, we need to understand the unit of
calculation. If 60 minutes make an hour, then each minute is one-sixtieth (1/60) of an hour.
Therefore, this is the unit of calculation, and forms the basis of converting other numbers of minutes
into fractions of an hour.

Applying the Unit to Calculations

3. Now that we have established the unit of calculation as one minute, which equals one-sixtieth of an
hour, we can apply this to other quantities. If one minute is one-sixtieth of an hour, then five minutes
must be five times as much. Therefore, five minutes equals five times one-sixtieth (i.e., 5 x 1/60),
which is one-twelfth (5/60 = 1/12) of an hour. Similarly, six minutes equals six times one-sixtieth (i.e.,
6 x 1/60), which is one-tenth (6/60 = 1/10) of an hour. And twenty minutes equals twenty times one-
sixtieth (i.e., 20 x 1/60), which is one-third (20/60 = 1/3) of an hour.

We have now mastered the art of calculating minutes as fractions of the hour.
1. » Calculations

2. » How to Calculate Manhours

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How to Calculate Manhours

By Eric Moll, eHow Contributor

updated: December 4, 2010

A man-hour is the amount of work done by one worker in one hour. Ten people working for eight
hours would do 80 man-hours of work, for example. If you know, from experience or prediction, how
many man hours it takes to complete a certain project, you can estimate how productivity will be
affected by adding or removing workers. This does not always work perfectly; doubling the amount
of workers on a construction site might not halve the building time because you only have one
working crane, for example. Still, man-hours are an important concept in managing teams of workers
efficiently.
Difficulty: Easy

Instructions
Calculating man-hours

1. 1
Determine how many people are working on the project. For our example, we will say that we have 20
workers.

2. 2
Calculate how many hours each person works, not counting break time, holidays or vacations. Multiply the
number of hours per day by the number of days worked. For our example, we will assume that all our
employees work 8 hours a day, minus a half hour break time, five days a week. This means that each employee
contributes 37.5 man-hours per week.

3. 3
 Multiply how much each person works by the total number of workers. In our example, 20 people working
37.5 hours a week equals 750 man-hours in one week.

Calculating how long it will take to complete a project

4. 1
Determine how many man-hours it takes to finish the project. This will either be known from experience or
will have to be estimated, and is specific to each project. As an example, let's say our 20 employees will be
planting corn by hand. We want to plant 30 acres of corn by hand, and we expect this to require 800 man-
hours.

5.2
Divide the number of man-hours required by the number of workers. 800 man-hours divided by 20 workers is
40 hours. Since our workers put in a little under 40 hours each week due to breaks, they will be able to finish
planting in just over five days.

6. 3
Perform the same calculation with a different number of workers to see the effect of hiring extra help or taking
people off the project. If we cut our workforce by five people, for example, it would take 53.3 hours, or just
over seven days (800/15=53.3).

7.4
Divide the number of man-hours needed to complete the project by the amount of time you want it to take.
This calculation will tell you how many people must be put on the job to finish it within a certain deadline.

Let's say our corn needs to be planted within three days, because we want it to be finished by the time it's
forecast to rain. Since one worker does 7.5 hours of work a day, he or she would do 22.5 hours of work in 3
days. Divide 800 by 22.5 to get 35.6. We would need 36 workers (or 35 full-time workers and 1 part time
worker) to finish the job in time.
Tips & Warnings
 Note that for more complicated projects, the Section 2 calculation will not be totally accurate. Two
chefs may be able to cut vegetables twice as fast as one chef, but they cannot roast a chicken any
faster.

References
 Merriam Webster - Definition of a man-hour
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2. » How to Calculate Man Hour Costs

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How to Calculate Man Hour Costs

By an eHow Contributor

Be sure to calculate the man hour costs before hiring a crew for a flat-rate project.

Labor costs include wages paid to workers for doing a certain amount or hours of work. Often you
may need to make a choice between contractors when one company explicitly quotes an hour rate
while the other proposes a flat rate to complete the same amount of work. To properly compare such
offers and find out the best deal, you need to calculate costs per man, per hour. As an example,
calculate such costs if three men accomplished a project for a flat rate of $15,120 working
seven business days, eight hours a day.
Difficulty: Easy

Instructions
Things You'll Need:
 Calculator
1. 1
Multiply the number of days by the number of working hours per day to calculate the total number of hours. In
our example, the number of hours is 7 days x 8 hours/day = 56 hours.

2. 2
Multiply hours by the number of workers to compute a man-hour value. In our example, man-hours needed to
complete the project is 56 hours x 3 men = 168 man-hours.

3. 3
Divide the total labor cost by the man-hours value calculate the man-hour rate. In this example, the man-hour
costs is $15,120 / 168 man-hours = $90 per man-hour.
References
 "The Labor Relations Process"; William H. Holley, Kenneth M. Jennings, and Roger S. Wolters; 2008

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