As the very centre of all guild operations in the kingdom, Travis often had meetings with Department Administrators directly to discuss matters. Some of the discussions were simple. At times, with certain members of staff, the discussions would become quite unprofessional and better-left off-record. This was not the case with Lilian Rosemary, the Head Administrator of the Triparte Guilds Staff Oversight Department.
She was a woman in her early forties, yet miraculously looking only in her thirties. Decades of experience in her position showed in her deeply-set eyebrows, a thin line for her lips, and tidy brown hair tied in a neat bun. She wore the same clothing set as Travis, except for a poncho replacing the surcoat and lacking the giant Triparte Guilds crest on the back and the double-helix patterns.
"The minimum wage has been increased to thirteen trinas (13) and eighty-one ganis (0.81) this year," she reported, writing down numbers while reaching for a small slice of apple from the tray. "That will mean we need to pay our staff higher. None of them is on minimum wage, but I suspect you want to keep our wages competitive."
"In the case of accountants, they make 1.52 times the minimum wage, yes?" Travis waited for her affirmative nod. "We pay them an additional 0.22 to stay competitive, making it 1.74 times the minimum wage."
Lilian's eyes narrowed and her eyebrows furrowed, almost to the point of a stern glare. Travis knew from their many interactions that it was simply her running through the numbers in her head.
"If we assume minimum wage workers work the maximum number of hours per week with the raised minimum wage, they would make 745.74 a week, so 2982.96 a month and 35,795.52 trinas annually. Under your purview, our accountants will make 1.74 times that wage, with their staff benefits included, so our new payroll expenses per accountant add to 62,284.21 trinas a year. Rounded up. They are about 40% of our total costs. The other expenses you have managed to cut costs on, thankfully, but there's little you can do about the employee payrolls being the biggest proportion of our total expenses."
'She is as quick as ever,' Travis thought as he did the multiplications on a sheet of paper.
He was no ordinary person, given his bright mind, but even he was not the maths mage that Lilian was. He chalked it up to experience and practise.
"Everything looks about right."
The glimmer in Lilian's eyes told him she was pleased with the comment, though she gave no further indication on what she thought.
"This… should be fine," she commented, once again in deep thought. "Commissions for our guild have been increasing ever since you came into office… you'll need to see Markus for more information, but I believe it was about 10,000,000 trinas in total expenses the previous cycle?"
He nodded, "yes."
"I also saw the projected annual total commissions revenue for this coming cycle. Eight hundred to nine hundred million trinas at lowest commissions rates right?"
"Given that 60% of that goes to adventurer compensations and another approximately twenty percent are operating costs, we can only take twenty percent of that as net profit."
"That is profit, we are not concerned with that as a publicly-owned organisation."
"I am aware, but the higher our profit margin becomes, the greater the evidence of our efficiency."
The rest of the discussion was relatively straightforward. They spoke more on what employee benefits could be revised, such as how many paid leaves staff members were entitled to, how disputes between employees should be handled, staff upskill programs, contractual framework, skills audits and a whole myriad of other matters. Ultimately, they had barely made it halfway before the allotted time for the meeting was up and they agreed to reconvene at a later date and time for the rest of their discussion. Both took a copy of the minutes and were back to their respective duties.