Not in energy. Not in hours. In actual money.
A two-hour meeting with eight leaders on an average salary of €100,000 costs the organisation roughly €1,400. Three hours costs about €2,100. On US salaries — eight leaders at $160,000 — the same two hours is about $2,200. That's before anyone prepares, and before anyone follows up. Most organisations have never put a number on this, which is exactly why the agenda always expands to fill the room booking.
How do you calculate it?
Three steps.
1. Turn salary into an internal hourly rate. Take the gross average salary, add social costs and corporate overhead — 50% is a common working assumption — then divide by annual working hours (roughly 1,750).
2. Multiply by the room. Hourly rate × number of participants × duration.
3. Ignore your instinct to round down. The number is usually larger than it feels.
The formula:
(average salary × 1.5) ÷ 1,750 × participants × hours
What does that look like in practice?
A leadership team of eight. A standing meeting of two or three hours.
In euros
| Average salary | 2-hour meeting | 3-hour meeting | | -------------- | -------------- | -------------- | | €80,000 | €1,100 | €1,650 | | €100,000 | €1,370 | €2,060 | | €120,000 | €1,650 | €2,470 | | €150,000 | €2,060 | €3,090 | | €200,000 | €2,740 | €4,110 |
In US dollars
| Average salary | 2-hour meeting | 3-hour meeting | | -------------- | -------------- | -------------- | | $100,000 | $1,370 | $2,060 | | $130,000 | $1,780 | $2,670 | | $160,000 | $2,190 | $3,290 | | $200,000 | $2,740 | $4,110 | | $250,000 | $3,430 | $5,140 |
Same formula in both tables — salary × 1.5, divided by 1,750 hours, times eight people. The salary bands are the ones native to each market, not one set of figures converted into the other.
These figures do not include preparation or follow-up — not for the leadership team, and not for anyone else contributing to the meeting. Add those and the real number is meaningfully higher.
And a full-day session?
Run the same arithmetic across a day and the scale changes.
Eight leaders at €120,000, for seven working hours, is around €5,800 in salary cost alone — about $7,700 for the same team at $160,000. Add venue, travel, and two days of someone's preparation, and a fairly ordinary leadership offsite passes €12,000 (roughly $15,000) without anyone signing off on a budget of that size.
Nobody would approve a €12,000 consulting invoice for a deliverable described as "we discussed the strategy." We approve exactly that, routinely, when it's shaped like a calendar invitation.
What does a badly designed day actually cost?
The salary cost is the same whether the day works or not. That's the uncomfortable part.
A well-designed day and a poorly designed one cost the organisation the identical amount. The difference is entirely in what comes out. So the real cost of poor design isn't the money — it's the money plus the decisions that didn't get made, plus the fact that you now need another day to make them.
The second day costs the same as the first.
So what do you do with the number?
Two things.
Use it to cut. Stop giving fifteen minutes to a minor agenda item just to fill the time you booked. Time on an agenda is not free space — it has a price, and you can look it up.
Use it to justify design time. If a day costs €12,000 to run, spending a day designing it properly is not an indulgence. It's the cheapest insurance available.
Shortening a meeting isn't a defeat. It's good resource management.