How does your company treat part time employees?

[TheBrockEllis]

I work for a web development company in the Midwest. I read all about today's tech companies and the kind of culture and environment they provide their employees and I do my best to try and emulate them where we can.

The one thing that I have not yet read about is how start-ups, or tech companies in general, treat part time employees? We employee about a quarter of our staff at < 30 hours/week. They are also not all developers- some are tech support and marketing as well. Do the benefits provided by the company (no vacation policy, paid holidays, free meals, etc) flow freely to all employees or is there some sort of cut off?

[caw]

The way my previous employers have handled it

* Holidays are the same (don't come into work!). Depending on the company it could be either paid or unpaid, but it's generally the same for everyone.

* Vacation is accrued based on the hours you work. Exempt employees generally have N days, and non-exempt would accrue N days if they worked 40 hours a week. Most of the time you have to work at least a year to get the days.

* Free meals are the same. Whoever is there gets the free food. If your part timers aren't there for the free lunch, oh well. Note - if you have contractors, I think giving them free food could potentially cross the line into them being an employee. My previous employer was always very careful never to give contractors freebies, not even free soda.

[Jeremy1026]

How could/does freebies to contractors make them employees? I ask because I am currently a contractor where I work, but get access to the soda/beer fridge, same as all the employees.

[caw]

Suppose you're a contractor who works full time at a particular company. This company is your only place of employment, and your contract doesn't have a defined term length (e.g. you're on till we don't need you anymore). Then you get all the miscellaneous perks of being a full time employee, but the company doesn't pay your holidays, time off, or health benefits. At that point, you start to look like an employee to the government.

This is why Microsoft and Google have defined contractor terms, and you can't come back for a period of time afterwards, etc.

[Jeremy1026]

Then I may not fall under that category, as I am a contractor in the sense that my "employer" is a staffing agency, and I am working for their client for 6 months before converting to an employee of the client. So, while I am a contractor for ClientX I am legally and employee of StaffingY

[jasonkester]

This is one of those situations that Contracting takes care of so nicely. It solves every one of those problems in the exact same way.

- Vacation: None. But they pay you enough that you can sort it out on your own.

- Paid Holidays: None. But they pay you enough that you can sort it out on your own.

- Health Care: None. But they pay you enough that you can sort it out on your own.

- Free Meals: None. But they pay you enough that you can sort it out on your own.

If you want to ramp down from 40 hours to 30 hours when you're on a contract, you simply do so. You'll find your pay adjusts accordingly but you still have plenty extra to take care of all those above items.