LOL Acra - should I consider this as you saying I'm stupid? }:)

I work in HR management... for me, right now, it means I manage a case load of people, I manage their benefits and administer their pay. Easy peasy cushy job. It's more of a labour relations position than a typical workforce management hr position, to be honest.

I know what you're talking about though... in my last job, it's what I did. We took the yearly days worked... took off 15 days for annual leave... 10 days for anticipated sick/personal days... and 10 days of anticipated all-staff training (it was all internal), giving us the anticipated number of work days each year per employee, which allowed me to make projections on requirements from staffing/scheduling, to equipment required for the anticipated staff, legal costs, benefit costs, etc... now I didn't have to actually calculate the required budget, but at the very least I provided the accounting department with the broken down projections on what should be needed, by head count, to meet operational requirements and SLA. Luckily, we didn't really do one-off training courses... we mostly did department training courses, where everyone in the section was in training at the same time, or over a few sessions if we couldn't close down our lines. Quite often the projections allowed us to be under budget, because it was based on the theory of everything that could go wrong would... and often we didn't actually have to hire based on past turn over trends, or we didn't need to hire seasonal staff because the training was scheduled properly, annual leave was spaced out properly, and people didn't take all their sick days, which meant the SLA was within target and we didn't need to necessarily increase staff for busier periods.

There were of course fluctuations nobody could have foreseen, such as a decision from one of the major companies we dealt with that spurred a ridiculous influx of calls and then our call centre was screwed for a few days... dropping our SLA for a while... but we always were able to bring it back up. It's very rare that we went over budget, during the 6ish years I was handling it. When we did, it was usually due to a higher turnover rate than expected and we were forced to either take a hit on SLA (which was a requirement due to the organization being mandated by a Crown Corporation, if we dipped too far below too often we could face a shut down) and hope for the best, or we could hire extra staff and be out that money.

Another thing, too - anything HR submitted HAD to be approved by senior management... our Director was a major c u next tuesday, and didn't seem to understand the basic concept of having to account for all the extra stuff... An employee hired on at 35K a year would actually cost closer to 50k a year when you considered benefits, rrsp matching, salary increase, etc... I know what you mean about people being too stupid to take these things into consideration when providing a breakdown of anticipated expenses. Luckily, our accounting took care of it and generally ignored what the Director said, because they were paid to manage the funds, not fudge the funds due to management ignorance.