Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A 3-year R01 budget has 65 percent in personnel costs covering the PI, a postdoc, and a graduate student.
- Is an instance
A Horizon Europe RIA includes 800,000 EUR in category A personnel costs across all beneficiaries.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
Equipment purchases are not personnel costs.
- Not an instance
Travel reimbursements are not personnel costs.
Editorial commentary
Personnel cost is the share of a grant budget that pays the salaries, wages, and fringe benefits of the people who actually carry out the funded work: the principal investigator, co-investigators, postdocs, graduate students, and technical staff whose time is charged to the award. In most research grants it is the single largest direct-cost line, which is why sponsors scrutinize it more closely than almost any other budget category.
Key personnel vs. non-key personnel
Sponsors distinguish key personnel — individuals named by position in the award, usually the PI and named co-investigators — from other paid staff. Under 2 CFR 200.308(f), a change in key personnel identified by position, a PD/PI’s disengagement from the project for more than three months, or a 25 percent reduction in a key person’s committed time and effort all sit on the list of changes a US federal recipient must get prior approval for — even when no dollar amount changes. Non-key staff can typically be substituted without notifying the sponsor.
Effort reporting and the salary cap
Personnel cost is charged in proportion to documented effort, not simply time worked: an institution’s effort-reporting system is the compliance backbone that ties a person’s salary charge on the award to what they actually did. Several US federal sponsors, most visibly NIH, also cap the salary rate chargeable to a grant (set at the Executive Level II rate, revised annually); any salary above that cap must be paid from non-federal funds, and effort reporting must still reflect true effort, not the reduced chargeable percentage. Where a researcher’s uncompensated time is formally committed as voluntary cost share, it becomes a tracked, auditable obligation rather than simple unfunded goodwill.
What it is not
Personnel cost does not include equipment, supplies, travel, or participant support costs, even when those items are administered by the same people whose salaries are charged to the award. It is also distinct from indirect costs, which recover institutional overhead rather than direct staff time.
Also known as
Staff cost (grant) · Salary cost · Effort-based salary
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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