Note 52 Employee benefit expense
€ million | 2021 | 2020 | ||
Salaries | 101 | 83 | ||
Social security premiums | 11 | 9 | ||
Pension costs: | ||||
- contributions paid to multi-employer plans that are accounted for as defined-contribution plans | 17 | 13 | ||
Termination benefit expenses | 2 | 1 | ||
Long-term employee benefit expenses | -1 | 1 | ||
Other staff costs | 8 | 8 | ||
Subtotal | 138 | - | ||
Charged to other organisational units | -10 | - | ||
Total | 128 | 115 | ||
The employee benefit expense item mainly concerns the costs of group-wide activities at holding company level.
Nearly all the personnel are on the Alliander N.V. payroll. The staff costs are charged to the business units where the employees concerned work. Employee benefit expenses in the income statement totalled €129 million in 2021 (2020: €115 million), and relate to the Alliander N.V. corporate staff department and service unit staff.
The number of employees, based on a 38-hour week (FTEs), at year-end 2021 was 1,284 (2020: 1,142). The main reason for the growth of the workforce is the restructuring of the group’s business units, which took place in 2021. Some departments were transferred from the subsidiary Liander N.V. to Alliander N.V.
The proportion of costs attributable to the direct deployment of Alliander staff to other business units’ projects has been deducted from Alliander’s employee benefit expenses.