As an employer, your employees will not always be full-time workers. For example, you may not have enough work in a specific area of your business for a role to be suitable for a full-time worker. Or perhaps your business does not run five days a week, so you cannot offer roles for full-time workers. Whatever your reason, if you employ part-time workers, there are some key points to be aware of to ensure you carry out your responsibilities as an employer correctly. This article will explain part-time work and some critical issues you should consider, such as treating part-time employees equally. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is no legal definition of a part-time worker. However, when staff members work part-time, they work fewer hours than a comparable full-time worker. A full-time employee\u2019s regular working hours are at least 35 hours per week, although some consider 30 hours full-time. Consequently, your part-time employees work less than 30-35 hours per week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are different ways of working part-time. For example, an employee may work term time only or share the role with another. They may work fewer days per week than your full-time member of staff or fewer hours per day. In this sense, part-time is fairly flexible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The following are some key points you should be aware of when employing part-time staff members. This is not an exhaustive list, but it will give you some crucial issues you should note.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many wish to work on a part-time basis. For example, parents with young children, semi-retired workers, and students who need to balance work and study may want to work part-time. As an employer, you may employ staff part-time to reduce costs to your business or for flexibility during a period of growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When you employ part-time staff, you must treat them equally to your full-time staff in terms of the benefits you provide them. The law protects your part-time staff against less-favourable treatment than their equivalent full-time workers. For part-time workers, their benefits apply on a pro-rata basis. This includes their:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whilst you should generally treat your part-time employees equally to their full-time counterparts, there are situations where you are allowed to treat them differently. However, where you do, you must demonstrate an \u2018objective justification\u2019 which is a good reason for treating them differently. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whilst your part-time workers will work fewer hours than your full-time workers when they increase their hours, this does not always result in overtime pay<\/a>. Ultimately, part-time workers may only receive an overtime rate of pay once their hours exceed the regular hours of your full-time workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once your employee is working for you part-time, you are not legally allowed to require them to work full-time hours. <\/p>\n\n\n\n However, when your full-time staff request to move to part-time work, you are legally required to consider their request when making it a flexible working request<\/a>. Your employees can make a flexible working request where they have: <\/p>\n\n\n\n While you are legally required to consider any flexible working request, you are not legally required to accept it but must explain why you do not agree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n Continue reading this article below the form\n <\/i>\n<\/a>\nSwapping Between Full-time and Part-Time Hours<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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