Part time work. Good for people, good for business.
Part time employment is on the increase. Its growth has outstripped that of full time employment over the past ten years: the number of part time employees is up 9%, compared to a 2% increase in full time employees (ONS data, May 2011).
There are plenty of good reasons to recruit part time staff. You can:
- access more senior skills, without stretching your budget
- pay just for the hours a job takes, without reducing candidate quality
- plug gaps in your staff’s skill-set, without waiting until there’s enough work to create a full-time role
- widen the talent pool of candidates and improve diversity in your business.
Here are just a few examples of recruitment problems where part time can provide a solution...
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Your full time problem
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The part time solution |
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You need to recruit a new business
development director, but you can’t
afford the market-rate of £40,000.
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Reduce the hours, rather than dropping
the standard of candidate. Get a
£40,000 candidate for £20,000.
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A newly created vacancy involves
a variety of tasks, and you can’t
find candidates with the right
spread of skills.
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Split the role. Look for 2 part time
candidates with complementary
skill-sets.
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Your small business is growing,
and you need to create an HR
function. You need top-level skills,
but not full time.
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Recruit a senior HR professional
for just one or two days a week.
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A valued staff member asks to
work part time, but you need the
role to remain full time.
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Recruit a job-share partner.
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Your database manager is leaving.
You suspect there was slack in the
role and are trying to think of extra
tasks to get your money’s worth.
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Save money instead.
Simply reduce the hours. |