How to Hire Part-time Staff For Your Business

When seeking to hire a new staff member, it can be a daunting process at first. Particularly if you’re a small business owner and don’t have an official HR department within your company. We look at what employers need to think about when hiring part-time staff and what they should do to ensure they get the best hire.

If you’re considering employing part-time staff, it’s likely you’ll have given thought to whether a part-timer will be a better move for your company over a full-time employee.

The Benefits of Employing Part-time Staff

There are lots of reasons why part-time workers make excellent recruits. Perhaps you require new skills to offer your current workforce, such as a part-time HR Manager or an administrator. Or perhaps you need to offer your clients expertise in a certain area.

Part-time staff can help to share the load during busy times, but also when staff go off sick or on holiday. You may also learn new skills from them as they help you to bring your current workforce along. There can even be tax benefits involved.

Above all, part-time workers can help your business to be more productive for less than the price of a full-time member of staff. Which for most businesses, is a very good proposition.

So, how exactly can you go about attracting part-time staff to your business?

When To Hire Part-time Staff

When you’re employing part-time staff, the first place to start is by establishing a part-time job description. Start by estimating the volume of work required. If the job already exists, it’s easy enough to establish how many hours the employee will be required to work for.

If you’re unsure, you can always discuss this at interview stage – for example, many flexible workers can let you know whether they will have the capacity to increase their working hours or decrease them as workload demands.

Talk to Your Existing Team

It’s a good idea to talk to your team about what the part-time format, including why it’s good for the business and what it involves, in advance of finding your new person. Discuss the characteristics you need in a new employee and how it might affect your team. This will help the new person to quickly integrate into the team and that will lead to greater productivity overall.

Find the Right Part-time Person

Focus your job search on competency, experience and personality and you won’t go wrong. These must come first as no amount of hours will make the wrong person right for the job. Many of Ten2Two’s clients find they can access a higher level of skills and experience by employing part-time staff, so make sure you make the most of it!

Choose a Candidate Who Really Wants Part-time Work

There are thousands of people who want to work part-time at a professional level. You don’t want to be unlucky and find someone who is using part-time as a stepping stone into full-time work. Make sure you ask candidates probing questions at interview about their motivation – or better still, hire a recruiter to screen the candidate before they get to the interview stage.

Remember That Part-time Talent Is A Huge Positive

The combination of a rewarding job, a reasonable salary, family-friendly hours and a convenient location mean employers can attract a higher calibre of experienced people than they expected. Don’t let worries about ‘too senior’ or ‘will get bored’ get in the way of your recruitment process.

Prepare For the Interview

Some employers mistakenly fear that balancing family and work might affect an employee’s reliability. Something not borne out in reality as many of Ten2Two’s clients feel their part-time employees are actually more productive. But if this worries you, a well-managed interview process will help you to understand a candidate’s desire for the role and the strength of their capabilities. And remember, questions about a person’s family or childcare arrangements are illegal.

Pro-rata and Part-time Contracts

Once you’ve settled on your perfect part-time employee, there will be aspects of the part-time contract that will need ironing out. Reduced hour contracts can affect entitlements – such as annual leave. The big one is whether you will pay bank holidays – you don’t have to. You can learn more about calculating annual leave for part-time employees here.

Agree to Review Future Flexibility

It’s always a good idea to make it clear from the outset when employing part-time staff that the business needs may result in adjustments being made as time goes on. If this is clear from the outset and both the employee and employer recognise this possibility, you can prepare for it in advance.

Feel inspired to start looking for your perfect part-time hire? There are lots of places you can advertise for a part-time employee, but if you use a reputable flexible recruiter like Ten2Two, you will access top-quality talent in a fraction of the time.

We have dozens of highly professional people on our books, all seeking new opportunities across all sorts of industries and sectors. You might be tempted to cast your net wide on social media, but when you go through a recruiter, you can find the process is effortless, saving you time and valuable money.

Contact our flexible and part-time recruitment agency today. We’d be more than happy to help you discuss your business’s part-time recruitment needs.