Three sliders and you have the yearly number: what your docs, decks and policies cost you, and how much of it comes back when your people watch them instead.
paid to people who read it and didn't understand it
$216,000 of that comes back when they watch it instead
Your people spend 10,000 hours a year on this material, costing $450,000. The headline is the share of that going to people who didn't take it in.
Estimates, not a quote. Based on averages across our customers and published benchmarks for comprehension of video versus written material. It counts time you already pay for, not new budget.
A calculator is only worth as much as the numbers behind it. Here's all of ours, so you can take this into a budget conversation without getting caught out.
The share of your annual document spend that buys nothing. Take the documents, decks and policies you publish in a month, multiply by twelve, then by the people who have to read them and the time each spends on one, and price it at the fully-loaded hourly rate. That's what this material costs you in a year. The headline is the part of it going to people who read it and didn't take it in - so if 31% understand it, 69% of that spend is the opportunity cost.
It's the working average for one substantial internal document - an onboarding guide, a policy update, a process walkthrough or a deck. It isn't pure reading time: it includes going back over the parts that didn't land and asking a colleague to explain the rest, which is where most of the hidden cost sits. Move the slider to whatever matches your material.
Published benchmarks put comprehension of written material around 31% and of the equivalent video around 79% - roughly 48 percentage points. The calculator applies that same gain to whatever you set as your starting point, capped at 95% because nobody reaches 100%. Set the starting slider honestly and the number stays honest.
Because it is. Time your people spend working through a document is time they aren't doing the job you hired them for, and finance already carries that as a fully-loaded cost. This isn't new budget you have to find - it's budget you're already spending, on an outcome you're not getting.
It would be double-counting. Retention describes the same hours already valued in the headline, so turning it into a second dollar amount would inflate the total. We show it as a multiple instead - fewer, more honest numbers beat a bigger one you can't defend to your CFO.
Because they're the units each side is actually thought about in. You know how many policies, guides and decks go out in a typical month - that's a number you can answer without looking anything up. Finance, though, works in annual lines, so that's what the money is shown in. The calculator multiplies your monthly volume by twelve and prices the year.
Bring your headcount, your training calendar and what you pay today. We'll scope a program against it and tell you straight whether it's worth doing.