Establishment—full-time equivalent staff (paid) (domestic and other staff), average N[NNN{.N}]

Guide for use:

Domestic staff are staff engaged in the provision of food and cleaning services including domestic staff primarily engaged in administrative duties such as food services manager. Dieticians are excluded.

This metadata item also includes all staff not elsewhere included (primarily maintenance staff, trades people and gardening staff).

The average is to be calculated from pay period figures. The length of the pay period is assumed to be a fortnight.

If under the relevant award of agreement a full-time employee is paid for an 80 (ordinary time) hour fortnight, the full-time equivalent for a part-time employee who works 64 hours is 0.8. If a full-time employee under the same award is paid for a 100 hours for that fortnight (20 hours overtime), then the full-time equivalent is 100 divided by 80 = 1.25.

Data on full-time equivalent staffing numbers by category should be consistent with data on salaries and wages by staffing category. If the full-time equivalent for contract staff is not collected then salaries for those contract staff should be included in other recurrent expenditure data items.

Where staff provide services to more than one establishment, full-time equivalent staff members should be apportioned between all establishments to which services are provided on the basis of hours paid for in each (salary costs should be apportioned on the same basis).

Origin:
National Health Data Committee

Comments:
This metadata item was amended during 1996-97. Until then, both average and end of year counts of full-time equivalent staff were included, and the end of year counts used as surrogates for the average counts if the latter were unavailable. The average count is more useful for accurate analysis of staffing inputs for establishment outputs and for assessments and comparisons of labour costs.