This article explains how to manage part-time employees in Personio and what to look out for.

For part-time employees, you must make a basic distinction between employees who work on the same days each week and employees whose working days vary from week to week.

This involves the settings example, which you will need to configure appropriately: entering the weekly hours, entering the salary, defining the work schedule and assigning the vacation entitlement. Since part-time employees with flexible working hours are a special case in terms of continued payment of wages during time off, this point will be explained separately.

Weekly hours

In Employee profile > Personal info > HR information > Weekly hours, define:

• how many hours is the employee is expected to work on a weekly basis as per their employment contract (example: 30/40 hours).
• how many hours are considered a full-time schedule for the employee if they were to work full-time (example: 30/40 hours).

This setting determines an employee's part-time value and contributes to the full-time equivalent (FTE) of the company. If the weekly working hours are adjusted, the salary adjusts accordingly based on the resulting part-time value. However, this does not impact vacation entitlement.

Salary

The salary setup differs depending on if the employee receives a fixed salary or an hourly salary. Read our article on how to set up a fixed or hourly salary.

Work schedule

A work schedule reflects your employees' working days and monthly target hours and can serve as the basis for calculating vacation. There are two different basic schedules that provide for fixed and flexible working days.

Note
Hours actually worked and confirmed by employees with hourly salaries are directly used to calculate their salaries. Therefore, it is not possible for employees with hourly salary to build up overtime. The overtime balance for an employee with an hourly salary therefore only serves the purpose of recording any additional work.

Fixed working days

The working hours of employees who work on fixed days can be distributed over the corresponding days of the week. If you do not already have a suitable work schedule for this, you can create one via Settings > Work Hours and Time off > Attendance > Add schedule. Once the work schedule is created, you need to assign it to the respective employees. Learn how to Create and assign work schedules.

Flexible working days

The working hours of employees who work on flexible days can be distributed evenly over the corresponding days of the week (generally Monday to Friday). If you do not already have a suitable work schedule, you can create one via Settings > Work Hours and Time off > Attendance > Add schedule. Then assign the work schedule to the respective employee. Learn how to Create and assign work schedules.

Vacation entitlement

To grant vacation entitlements to your part-time employees, you must create an accrual policy and assign it to them. When you create the policy, you can choose whether to grant the full entitlement, or to reduce it proportionally. If you choose the latter, you can prorate by working days or hours.

Grant entitlement based on worked time

You can also decide to grant entitlements based on the amount of time the employee actually worked in a month. This option requires:

• The part-time employee to track their working hours regularly.
• The HR manager or supervisor to manually adjust the employee’s balance every month.

To set this up, follow these steps:

1. Go to Settings > Work Hours & Time off > Time off, and select the relevant time off type.
2. Create an accrual policy with an annual entitlement of zero.
3. Assign the policy to the relevant employees.

Then, at the end of each month:

1. Check the part-time employee’s tracked time in their Attendance tab.
2. Use the figure to calculate their monthly entitlement.
3. Adjust their balance accordingly.

Pay out salaries during time off

To make sure that employees who are paid by the hour continue to receive their salary during a time off period, navigate to Settings > Work Hours & Time off > Time off and enable Consider time tracked during time off of this type as overtime?. When a time off day is recorded, employees will be paid for the hours designated for that day in the work schedule.

Depending on whether your employees have fixed or flexible working days, it is recommended that you activate or deactivate this function.

Fixed working days

If your employees have fixed working days, you should enable the function Consider time tracked during time off of this type as overtime?. This ensures that your employees will receive the corresponding salary also on vacation or sick days.

Flexible working days

For employees with flexible work schedules, it is advisable to disable the function Consider time tracked during time off of this type as overtime? if the number of hours for which employees should be paid on a time off day differs from the number of hours specified in the work schedule. When they have a time off day, employees will then need to enter the number of hours for which they should be paid on that day time off day in the Attendance tab of their employee profile. This ensures that the overall attendance balance for this group of employees is displayed correctly.

Tip
If you are tracking the attendance of two groups of different employees in your company, it can be helpful to create the same time off type twice. This way, employees with fixed working days can be automatically paid the corresponding hourly salary for a time off day, with the hours entered during the time off counted as overtime. Employees with flexible working days will additionally need to enter the hours they should be paid for each time they enter a time off day.

Summary