One hour of labour costs companies in Germany an average of €45 today. In 2025, labour costs per hour worked increased by 3.6 percent. Since 2020, the cost of an hour of labour has therefore risen by 22.3 percent.
With figures like these, it is worth asking a question that can easily get overlooked in day-to-day operations: How much time does the way a company organises its working hours and HR processes actually cost?
Costs do not only arise when an invoice is issued. They also result from manual data entry, corrections, queries and processes that have to be handled more than once. What makes little difference in an individual case can add up to a significant amount of effort across several hundred employees.
Five minutes can make a difference
Take a company with 250 employees. If digital processes save an average of just five minutes per employee per working day, that adds up to more than 4,500 hours per year based on 220 working days. At €45 in labour costs per hour, this corresponds to a calculated amount of around €206,000.
The calculation is deliberately simple. It is not a forecast and does not replace an individual cost-benefit analysis. Rather, it shows why it is worth translating even small amounts of lost time into euros. This is exactly where it becomes interesting to take a closer look at today’s processes. According to Bitkom, around 29 percent of German companies still record working hours using Excel spreadsheets or handwritten timesheets.
This is often where the effort really begins, after the working hours have actually been recorded. Data has to be transferred, checked and, where necessary, corrected. In payroll accounting, 47 percent of German companies identify subsequent checks and corrections as a problem. This is shown by a survey conducted by SD Worx as part of the 2023 Payroll Proficiency Index.
The key question is therefore not just how much a digital solution costs. It is also: what does the existing process cost?
Making ROI tangible
ISGUS’s new ROI-Calculator allows companies to explore this question based on their own circumstances. Users can enter individual parameters such as the number of employees and labour costs to calculate the potential savings that could result from more efficient processes.
The real benefit is less about arriving at a supposedly magical number and more about the perspective behind it: an investment in Workforce Management cannot be meaningfully assessed by looking solely at acquisition costs. What matters is the relationship between the investment and the value it creates in day-to-day operations.
Reducing manual data entry, minimising corrections, shortening administrative processes and making information more readily available can all play a role, as can relieving the workload of HR teams and managers. The ROI-Calculator turns this consideration into a concrete calculation.
Workforce Management pays off beyond time tracking
The economic benefits of digital HR processes often arise where multiple workflows intersect. That is why ZEUS® Workforce Management from ISGUS combines Time and Attendance, HR Management, Staff Scheduling, Production Data Capture and Access Control within a central system landscape. Depending on requirements, the ZEUS® mobile App, SAP-Communication or the ISGUS Cloud can also be added.
This makes it possible to use information across process boundaries instead of entering it multiple times or transferring it between different systems. For example, working time data can be used directly for other HR processes, while planning and analysis are based on a shared data foundation.
Especially as labour costs continue to rise, this integration is becoming increasingly important. Every hour spent on unnecessary manual tasks is an hour that is missing elsewhere.
What does it cost to change nothing?
The question of a software solution’s ROI therefore does not start with the software. It starts with the status quo.
How much time is currently spent on manual tasks? Where do corrections arise? How many processes still rely on Excel, paper or media discontinuities? And what would the time regained by employees and managers be worth?
The ROI-Calculator provides an initial individual answer to these questions. It shows the potential scale of your savings and creates a sound basis for further discussion.
Calculate it for yourself: how much time are you still losing?
