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How to Calculate (and Manage) PTO for Part-Time Employees

In some businesses, setting up your PTO policy is relatively straightforward. Everyone works the same hours, and time off works the same for everyone.

But what about when you have a range of employees working a variety of different schedules? How do you figure out PTO for part-time employees? 

It would feel pretty unfair for people working a full-time schedule if someone working half the number of hours had the same amount of PTO available.

Luckily, it shouldn’t be too difficult to get your head around this. There are a couple of simple ways to calculate and manage PTO for part-time employees, to ensure your PTO policy is fair and equal for everyone, while allowing all your team members to get the rest they need to stay healthy and productive.

Defining Part-Time Employees

First, what is a part-time employee?

The real definition of part-time can be vague. The US Department of Labor doesn’t define full-time or part-time, and leaves it up to employers to decide.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) states the following:

  • Full-time workers are those who usually work 35 or more hours per week.
  • Part-time workers are those who usually work fewer than 35 hours per week.

While the IRS defines full-time as working “at least 30 hours of service per week, or 130 hours of service per month.”

Most other countries have a similar approach to the US, not giving a strict definition for full-time or part-time.

This example from New Zealand’s government website is in line with most other countries.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter too much what your definition of a part-time employee is. For the purpose of this article, let’s just assume that full-time employees work a regular 40 hour week, while part-time is anything less than that.

Do Part-Time Employees Get PTO?

The answer to this depends on a couple of things – firstly, state/local labor laws.

In some places, employers must provide all employees with paid time off, whether they work part-time or full-time.

In most states in the US, this isn’t the case. There’s no federal law that entitles employees to paid time off, and only a small number of states that do so.

If the law doesn’t explicitly state so, a company doesn’t need to provide part-timers with PTO. Their PTO policy might say that only people working a certain number of hours or days per week are entitled to PTO (or other benefits).

Should Part-Time Employees Get PTO?

Though they may not be automatically entitled to the same benefits as full-timers, part-time employees should get access to paid time off as well.

PTO is a highly valued benefit, which plays a big role in attracting and retaining talent (remember that part-timers can still be a key part of a business, as much as full-timers).

And though part-time employees don’t work as many hours for the company, that doesn’t mean they automatically have more free time and thus don’t need the time off. Many part-time employees have busy lives – maybe they study, or work other jobs, or take care of young children.

These people need access to paid time off just like full-time employees do, to avoid burnout and maintain a positive work-life balance.

Learn more: 7 Reasons to Make PTO a Priority In Your Business

How to Calculate PTO for Part-Time Employees

Now let’s take a look at how to calculate PTO for part-time workers.

As we mentioned, it would be a bit unfair to other employees if some employees worked half the time but got the same amount of time off. Luckily, there are a couple of easy ways to get around this.

Option One: Prorated PTO

Let’s say full-time employees get 20 days of PTO per year (made available at the start of each year– aka lump-sum PTO).

To keep it fair and even for all employees, you could prorate the PTO allowance for part-time employees to match how much they work.

This means dividing the regular PTO allowance by the percentage of a full-time schedule that the part-time employee works.

So if an employee works 25 hours per week (let’s assume full-timers work 40 hours), they’re working 62.5% of a full-time schedule (25/40).

Their prorated PTO allowance would thus be 12.5 days per year (62.5% of 20 days).

This is a fairly straightforward way to manage PTO for part-time employees who work the same schedule week in week out.

Option Two: Accrued PTO

The second option is to use an accrued PTO system.

This means employees’ PTO allowance steadily increases relative to their time worked.

There’s no need to create a different PTO policy for part-time employees, because the system already takes into account their differences in working hours or days, and adjusts PTO accordingly.

With accrued PTO, you might say that each employee earns 1 hour of PTO for every 10 hours worked.

If someone works a full-time, 40 hour week, they earn 4 hours of PTO.

If another employee only works 20 hours, they earn 2 hours of PTO.

Each employee’s PTO balance goes up as they work, and at any time they can take PTO from their available balance.

This is the way most teams calculate PTO (the accrual rate, frequency and other details might be different) if they have team members working different schedules, different number of hours, and particularly if part-time employees might have different working hours from week to week.

Managing PTO for Part-Timers

You’ll manage PTO for part-time employees much like you will with full-time employees.

Generally, you don’t want to have too many different rules or procedures based on an employee’s status. Though you can have different PTO policies for different employees, it’s easier and more fair if you keep it as even as possible.

You’ll need to do a little more work, particularly if you run an accrual-based PTO system, to keep part-timers’ PTO balances up to date, relative to their working time.

You can use our free PTO accrual calculators to make calculating accruals much easier. These tools help you figure out accrual rates, hourly accruals based on hours worked, and more, saving you time and reducing errors. 

Alternatively, you can use an app like Flamingo to take care of your leave management needs, including automating PTO accruals and keeping employees’ PTO balances up to date.

Final Thoughts to Consider

In most cases, businesses should offer PTO for their part-time employees as well as full-timers.

The only exceptions might be if the part-time employees are casual staff, who aren’t on fixed schedules and only work intermittently (such as temp workers).

Generally, if they’re permanent employees (meaning each week they have regular hours), they should be able to take time off.

When you’re setting up your PTO policy, make sure you outline any differences between PTO for full-time or part-time employees, as well as clearly defining what constitutes part-time and full-time.

And, to make sure everything runs smoothly while staff are on leave, use a leave tracker like Flamingo to keep track of who’s on and who’s off, keep balances up to date, and ultimately spend less time managing paid time off.

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