6 tips for better part-time staff management

Flexible working is on the rise. There are over eight million part-time professionals in the UK; 88,000 more than two years ago. But while reduced hour opportunities are bringing fresh talent into the workforce, it’s not easy to manage staff on different contracts.

There are many benefits to employing people part-time – from lower salary commitments to keeping loyal employees when their circumstances change. However, to ensure you’re using their skills to full effect, you need to plan work rosters and allocate tasks carefully.

To help you maximise the value of every person in your business, here are our six tips for better part-time staff management:

1. Clearly plan your workforce requirements

Employees are both your most valuable asset and your biggest overhead – so use people’s availability strategically.

Mapping out your staffing requirements ahead of time will enable you to see when you need more people on shift, or require specific skills. This way, you can use part-time staff effectively to make the most of their capabilities.

2. Include staff availability in your shift planning decisions

One of the biggest challenges businesses face with managing flexible workers is planning shifts around part-time employees. It's difficult to align workforce requirements with people's availability if you’re still using manual staff management tools such as spreadsheets.

An increasing number of companies are investing in online shift planning systems, which integrate contract information with your employee schedule. A digital staff management platform will show you which team members you can select for upcoming shifts, so you don’t inadvertently include someone who isn’t contracted to work that day.

3. Focus their workload on weekly or monthly tasks

If an employee only works part of the week, you need to share their daily tasks across multiple team members. This can lead to disjointed processes and time-consuming handovers – plus, it’s hard for your colleagues to know who to contact if they have a problem or question.

It makes more sense to allocate weekly or monthly responsibilities to part-time staff in many businesses, as they can work these tasks around their schedule. But if you do still want to assign daily roles to part-timers, an online task planning and management tool can help you (and your team) keep a close eye on who is responsible for doing what each day.

4. Give everyone visibility of the work schedule

What happens when your staff aren’t working is just as important as their working time. Unfortunately, too many part-timers miss vital meetings and project updates because they can’t make the time.

The key to successful part-time staff management is giving everyone visibility of the work schedule. With an online shift planning platform, you can give each employee their own login. That way, they can check their work rota and see who is working with them. And they can also use this data to plan tasks, meetings and project milestones around the availability of part-time team members.

5. Set tailored policies for part-time workers

While scheduling and workload planning is the main challenge associated with part-time staff management, there are other areas to consider too – such as holiday entitlement.

Setting clear HR policies and contractual terms for part-time employees enables everyone in your business to know where they stand. And it also establishes clear guidelines for any future staff moving to flexible working hours.

To enforce these policies with minimal disruption, look for ways to integrate people’s contractual terms into your staff management processes. For example, some shift planning platforms include an annual leave management feature so that you can factor holiday allowances and time off requests into your upcoming schedule.

6. Increase your flexibility to work around people’s needs

As discussed in our recent ebook – 7 ways to simplify your flexible working set-up – the flexible working movement gathers momentum. Industry leaders have proven the productivity and loyalty benefits of structuring businesses beyond traditional shift patterns and 9-5 days. Now companies are looking for ways to overcome the practical obstacles to working alternative or part-time hours.

Embracing online shift planning tools is a simple yet powerful way to increase flexibility in your organisation. By creating real-time visibility over scheduling and staff availability, you can align workload with people’s availability – using everyone’s skills and value to full potential.

And by choosing a platform like WhosOffice, which features built-in HR management, task planning and holiday planning tools, you can integrate every aspect of employee organisation into your scheduling. Making part-time staff management much easier to achieve.

Start your free WhosOffice trial to plan your work schedule online.