By law you must treat your part-time workers as favourably as comparable full-time workers. This means that part-time workers must enjoy pro-rata, equal terms and conditions. This includes rates of pay, holiday entitlement, sick pay, maternity and parental leave, access to training and career development and company pension schemes, amongst other things. The law applies equally to all part-time workers, whether they are term-workers, who tend to be parents and work during term time and take unpaid leave during the school holidays, or temporary workers, whether hired on fixed term contracts or not.
Part-time workers have the same rights and benefits – obviously in proportion to the hours they work as full timers. If part-timer workers believe they are not being treated equally, they can ask for a written statement of reasons for this. You must respond within 21 days. If part-timers think they are being treated unfavourably, they can go to an employment tribunal and you will have to pay compensation if they win. And they will win unless you can prove it is absolutely necessary to treat them differently – for example you may be justified in not allowing a part-time worker to join a health insurance scheme because of the disproportionate cost.
Overtime rates must be the same as full-timers also. However, legally you do not need to pay overtime rates until the part-timer exceeds normal full-time hours. Remember that part timers enjoy leave proportionate to the amount of days they work each week. So if you offer every full-time worker four weeks pay (which is the legal minimum), you must offer someone who works three days a week 12 days paid annual holiday.
When calculating entitlement to maternity and parental leave, again you must treat part-timers the same as full-timers. If there are promotion opportunities and pension schemes these must also be offered. If you are considering redundancy – a minefield in itself – you cannot select a part-timer unfavourably against a full timer. Another area to consider is staff training. If possible, try to organise it when all staff can attend.
Consider also the benefits you offer to full time workers, and make sure these are offered, pro-rata to part-time staff. This is also a legal requirement, and does not just apply to pension schemes, but also to company cars, health insurance, profit sharing and share option schemes, annual public holidays, staff discounts, training, subsidised mortgages or anything else that you offer to full-time staff.
Of course, it can be difficult to divide benefits such as company cars, and in these cases an employer can withhold such benefits if they can show the decision can be justified on objective grounds. In these cases try to follow best practice, and calculate the financial benefits pro rata and give that amount to the part-time worker. For example calculate the financial benefits of a company car and give half the amount in payment to a part-time worker who does half the number of hours of a full time worker.
There are many advantages to employing part-time workers, and for some companies they are the life-blood of the business. As long as you follow the rules and make sure any part-timers and given the same rights and benefits as full-timers, you will stay within the law, and have a happy and flexible staff.
