"The manager of the Personnel Department at City Enterprises has been reading about time-driven ABC and wants to apply it to her department. She has identified four basic activities her employees spend most of the their time on: Interviewing, Hiring, Assessment, and Separation Processing. The department employs five staff who perform these activities. The manager provides the following estimates for the amount of time it takes to complete each of these activities"

Interviewing: 50 minutes.
Hiring: 65 minutes.
Assessment: 85 minutes.
Separation Processing: 95 minutes.

Employees in Personnel work 40-hour weeks with four weeks for vacation. Of the 40 hours, five are reserved for administrative tasks, training, and so on. The costs of the Personnel Department, including any allocated costs from other staff functions, are $977,000. During the year, Personnel conducted 1,700 interviews, made 475 hires, made 4,000 assessments, and had 275 separations.

Required:

a. What is the cost per minute for activities in Personnel? (Round your answer to 2 decimal places.)
b. What is the cost of interviewing and hiring one employee? (Round your intermediate calculations and final answers to 2 decimal places.)
c. How many minutes of unused capacity did Personnel have for the year?
d. What was the cost of the unused capacity in Personnel? (Round your intermediate calculations to 2 decimal places.)

The answers are:

a. cost per minute = $407.08

b. cost of interviewing and hiring one employee = $46,814.20

c. cost of unused capacity = $122,124

Explanation:

To solve this, let us outline the important details;

Total cost of activities = $977,000

Total hours of activities = 40 hours

Time for administrative activities = 5 hours

Interviewing: 50 minutes.

Hiring: 65 minutes.

Assessment: 85 minutes.

Separation Processing: 95 minutes

Now let us solving the questions one by one;

a. cost per minute for activities;

Cost per minute = (Total cost ÷ total time of activities)

Cost per minute = 977,000 ÷ 40 = $24,425

b. cost of interviewing and hiring one employee; this is calculated by multiplying the total time in hiring and interviewing an employee in minutes by the cost per minute for activities. It is calculated below;

Interviewing: 50 minutes.

Hiring: 65 minutes.

Total time used in Hiring and Interviewing = 50 + 65 = 115 minutes

remember that cost per minute = $407.08

∴ 1 minute = 407.08

∴ 115 minutes = 407.08 × 115 = 46,814.20 (to 2 decimal places)

c. cost of unused capacity is the same as cost reserved for administrative tasks, not used in the four major activities described, and from the statement given in the question, the time allocated for unused capacity = 5 hours.

Therefore let us convert 5 hours to minutes

1 hour = 60 minutes

∴ 5 hours = 5 × 60 = 300 minutes

remember that 1 minute = $407.08

∴ 300 minutes = 300 × 407.08 = $122,124