Part-time contracts
Your business could experience a range of benefits from employing part-time workers including being an efficient way to reduce costs in areas where you don't yet need full-time hours, increasing recruitment and staff retention by offering a family-friendly way of working and increasing access to a wider range of skills.
Part-time workers are entitled to the same rights as their full-time colleagues. They can’t be treated less favourably than anyone else, even if they work less hours.
Benefits
- Allows you to attract highly skilled and experienced staff members even when budgets don't allow recruitment on full-time basis
- Demonstrates that your business values having a diverse workforce
- Widens recruitment opportunities - part-time work tends to attract parents with younger children and older people, who may not want to work full-time or have caring responsibility who can bring a wide range of skills, experience and expertise
- Enables your business to be flexible - for example, you can use more workers at peak times and extend your operating hours by using part-time workers
- Helps to reduce overtime costs and associated stress - a part-time worker can support increased demand without the negative effects of stress and fatigue on existing workers doing overtime
Entitlements
- Rates of pay (including redundancy and sick pay)
- Holiday and leave (including maternity/paternity leave etc.)
- Pension entitlement
- Training and career development opportunities
- Promotion opportunities
There are some factors that may differ for part-time workers including overtime or health insurance and some bonuses will be offered pro-rata and in proportion to the hours contracted.
Reducing hours
There maybe times in a person’s employment that they find they need to move from full-time to part-time, so how do you navigate this? Rather than losing a strong member of the team, it is better to find a way that works for everyone and this information from the CIPD may help.
Find more information about managing employees moving to part-time work here.
Statutory holiday entitlement and bank holidays
The following resources can help to calculate holiday entitlement for part-time workers.
