Cumulative hours in a business or human resources context refers simply to a total sum of hours. It may refer to the total hours worked by a division of employees for which you want to plan payroll, or it could be a calculation for an individual employee to see whether the employee is eligible for a wage increase or benefit. Often, for part-time employees, the threshold for eligibility will be lowered in proportion to the percentage of full-time hours they work. (For instance, a half-time employee might need 50 percent of the cumulative hours of a full-time employee to receive a benefit.)

Things You Will Need

  • Calculator

  • Time records

Define the population for your cumulative hours calculation if it is not an individual. This may be a department or a production team, for example. Define also the time period you will analyze, whether it is a quarter, calendar year or other period.

Review the time records for the individual or individuals for which you are calculating cumulative hours and add together the total hours worked for each of them.

Add the totals for each individual together to get the total cumulative hours worked. For example, if your production team personnel have worked 120 hours, 135 hours and 130 hours so far this quarter, the cumulative hours works out to 385.