Training & Development · resourcing model

What it takes to run an 800-staff credit program

A planning model for a 24-credit / year continuing-education requirement. Move the controls to match how you'd actually deliver it, and watch the staffing estimate respond. Every control and every cost line is explained below — hover the iLike this. Hover or tab to any of these for a quick definition. markers for a quick note.

Set your delivery model

Small-class ILT share iPortion of each person's 24 credits taught in small instructor-led classes (~30 in a room). The most learning-intensive format — and the most expensive, because every cohort is a fresh live delivery. Pushing this up raises delivery, prep, and scheduling load. 58%
Conference-style share iPortion taught in larger rooms (~50, two instructors). Far more efficient per head than small classes, so shifting credits here lowers cost — at the price of less hands-on interaction. 25%
eLearning (remainder) iWhatever credits aren't instructor-led become self-paced online modules. These cost real money to build once, but then deliver to all 800 with almost no per-person delivery cost. Set by the two sliders above. 17%
Small class size iStudents per small ILT session. Smaller classes teach skills better but multiply the number of cohorts you must deliver and schedule. Drop this from 30 to 20 and watch the FTE jump. 30
Taught by others iShare of live teaching handed to external instructors. Removes those hours from your own team's delivery load, but adds contracting, briefing, and quality-assurance coordination in their place. 20%
Curriculum paths iNumber of distinct role/level curricula (e.g. PCP, ACP, specialty teams). More paths means more separate content to build and maintain — this drives content cost, not delivery cost. 3
Admin hrs / person / yr iPer-staff tracking: enrolment, credit reconciliation across paths, exception handling, and chasing the last stragglers. This is the lever you can engineer down with a Power Apps / SuccessFactors workflow. 1.25
Logistics hrs / session iCoordination per live session instance: booking rooms and equipment, building the roster, reminders, capturing sign-in, entering attendance. Multiplies by the number of sessions you run. 3

From paid hours to real capacity

A full-time municipal post is paid for ~2,080 hours, but almost no program runs on that figure. Subtract leave, the team's own training, and the share of the working day that goes to meetings, admin, and breaks, and you get the hours actually available for this program — the honest denominator for any staffing ask.

Paid hours / yr iGross contracted hours for one full-time post. 2,080 = a 40-hour week; some municipal admin posts run a 35-hour week (~1,820). The starting point before any deductions. 2,080
Vacation (weeks) iUnionized municipal entitlement scales with seniority — commonly 4 weeks mid-career, 5–6 for senior staff. Set this to the band your actual team sits in, not the minimum. 4
Statutory holidays (days) iOntario's ESA sets 9 public holidays; municipalities commonly observe a few more (civic holiday, float days). Paid, but not available for program work. 11
Sick / personal (days) iBudgeted average usage, not the entitlement cap. Public-sector averages often run higher than people expect — plan for what actually gets taken across the team. 6
Own CE + mandatory training (hrs) iInstructors maintaining their own credentials and recerts, plus corporate mandatory training (privacy, AODA, WHMIS). Your T&D staff are also subject to this very 24-credit requirement — count it. 60
On-program utilization (%) iShare of remaining working hours that lands on actual program work, after general meetings, email, corporate admin, paid breaks, supervisory duties, and context-switching. Knowledge work is roughly 70–80%; unionized public-sector planning leans to the lower end. 78%

Paid hours

2,080

Hours actually at work

1,724

Effective hrs / FTE iWhat one full-time post truly delivers against this program after both haircuts. This — not 2,080, not a round 1,800 — is the denominator the estimate uses.

1,345

The estimate

Steady-state staffing iTotal T&D workload divided by the effective hours one FTE delivers (derived in the capacity panel above), not a round number. Recurring effort — Year 1 runs higher (see note below).

1.85FTE

T&D hrs / yr

3,330

Live sessions / yr

117

Front-line hrs pulled i800 staff × 24 credits of paramedic time taken off the road — about 10.7 FTE-equivalent. Not a T&D cost, but the largest organisational cost of the program, and the figure leadership will ask about first.

19,200
Live delivery Content creation Headcount-driven overhead Fixed / external

What each cost line means

The tag on each card is the thing to internalise: a line either grows with your 800 staff, grows with your content catalogue, or stays roughly fixed. Instructor-led delivery is what tips a program toward the headcount-driven side, which is why the model is so sensitive to the format mix.

Fixed assumptions baked into the model
These stay constant as you move the sliders. Adjust them in the code if your reality differs.
  • Conference sessions seat 50 with 2 instructors; small classes use 2 instructors; sessions average 4 hours.
  • Delivery prep runs at 0.5× contact time (re-prep and setup for an already-built session, not first build).
  • eLearning build ≈ 60 hours of work per finished hour; instructor-led materials ≈ 15 hours per finished hour.
  • Half the content catalogue is refreshed or rebuilt each year; multiple paths multiply the distinct content.
  • Program governance is held flat at 300 hrs/yr. One FTE's effective capacity is no longer a fixed number — it's built up in the capacity panel from leave, own training, and on-program utilization, so the staffing figure reflects a real municipal post rather than a paper 2,080 hours.
  • Year 1 is not steady state. Add the full initial catalogue build plus framework, policy, and LMS standup — budget meaningfully higher for the first year.