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You're Probably Cheating Part-Time Employees

Are you cheating your employees for personal gain? Your managers probably are, and you don't even know about it. How come part-time workers are paid less, but expected to produce the same per hour as full-time workers?

A common trick used in many businesses is bringing on part-time staff during heavy load times, paying them less, but scheduling them for the maximum allowable hours.

Part-time workers are often equally skilled and always less costly to maintain. The overhead associated with part-time workers is less. Most part-time workers don't get benefits of full-time employees-- something that saves companies lots of money. Plus, part-time workers usually share resources like offices, workstations, and materials.

This pay scheme is common in the retail world, places like Wal*Mart save millions a year hiring part-time staff to do full-time work. It's becoming a trend in the professional workforce as companies move to instant teams and try to create commodities of worker skills.

By paying part-time people less you are disrespecting the skills of an individual. It would be novel to provide equal pay as their full-time counterparts, some companies do it. The key is to pay for the expected contribution, and respect the individual as a part of your team.

Part-time workers are useful for transitional positions, temporary changes in workload, seasonal needs, and specialized skills. It can also support an individual employee lifestyle needs, but don't take advantage of them.

Depending on the laws in your area, you're part-time employees may be entitled (even professionals) to night differentials, overtime pay, and other conditions that could cost you more over the long run than if you just pay them fair now.

/ earning-trust | employee-relations /

By Justin Hitt at November 16, 2003 3:40 PM  Subscribe in a reader

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