When you’re thinking about creating a new job at your company, it can be difficult to know whether the tasks the job would cover warrant hiring someone full-time or part-time, or if you need your current employees to simply share the load and take on a few more responsibilities.
In this article, we’ll show you why it’s essential to calculate the number of hours of work a job requires and how to go about doing this.
Key Takeaways
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Knowing how many hours of work a job requires helps you figure out if you need to hire a part-time or full-time employee.
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Estimate how many hours of work the job would require each week, remembering that some tasks needed to be added in once a month or quarter.
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Leave room in employees’ workloads to take on new tasks or try new ideas as the company grows.
Why It’s Important To Determine How Many Hours of Work a Job Requires
Knowing how much time it will take for someone to do a job is a huge factor in deciding whether you need to hire a full-time or part-time employee, as well as how many employees you need to hire.
This prevents you from over or under-working your employees, and it helps you keep your workforce lean while covering all necessary tasks and responsibilities.
It also gives you a baseline for determining which new projects and tasks should go to which employees, as well as gauging when an employee may need some additional training on a task to help them go more quickly.
How to Calculate the Number of Hours of Work a Job Requires
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Write down the tasks the job would cover. Include everything – big and small – and be as specific as possible. If you’re hiring a receptionist, for example, your task list might look like this:
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Answering 10-12 phone calls per day.
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Responding to 10-15 client emails per day.
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Taking notes during 4-5 hours of meetings a week.
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Setting up for 4-5 meetings per week.
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Picking up the mail.
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Mailing items as needed.
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Creating and emailing staff schedules.
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Making travel arrangements.
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Make name badges for new employees.
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Monitor office supply levels and buy new ones.
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Manage office equipment maintenance requests.
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Label each task as “daily,” “weekly,” or “monthly.” You may need different categories for your job, but you get the idea. It doesn’t need to be exact, either – label a task “daily” if it needs doing more than once a week. Here’s what our example list may look like when you do this:
Task Frequency Answering 10-12 phone calls per day. Daily Responding to 10-15 client emails per day. Daily Taking notes during 4-5 hours of meetings a week. Daily Setting up for 4-5 meetings per week. Daily Picking up the mail. Daily Mailing items as needed. Weekly Creating and emailing staff schedules. Weekly Making travel arrangements as needed. Monthly Make name badges for new employees. Monthly Monitor office supply levels and buy new ones. Weekly Manage office equipment maintenance requests as needed. Monthly -
Track or estimate the time commitment of each task. Chances are, you or someone else is already doing at least a few of the tasks that your new employee will be covering. As you do those tasks, log how long each one takes you. Ideally, you’ll be able to do this for a week or two to get a really good idea of what each one requires.
If you’re hoping to hire someone to cover responsibilities that no one is handling right now, estimate how long those will take as best you can. If you have no frame of reference for how long something takes, talk with your colleagues to see how much time it takes them or their employees to do similar tasks.
Here’s what our example list might look like at this point in the process:
Task Frequency Time per Week Answering 10-12 phone calls per day. Daily 2 hours/day, 10 hours/week Responding to 10-15 client emails per day. Daily 1 hour/day, 5 hours/week Taking notes during 4-5 hours of meetings a week. Weekly 5 hours/week Setting up for 4-5 meetings per week. Weekly 2 hours/week Picking up the mail. Daily 30 min/day, 2.5 hours/week Mailing items as needed. Weekly 1 hour/week Creating and emailing staff schedules. Weekly 1 hour/week Making travel arrangements as needed. Monthly 4-5 hours/month Make name badges for new employees. Monthly 2 hours/month Monitor office supply levels and buy new ones. Weekly 2 hours/week Manage office equipment maintenance requests as needed. Monthly 5 hours/month -
Add up how much time the daily and weekly tasks on your list will take. This can be the key to determining how many hours of work the job will require.
For example, if your list of daily and weekly tasks adds up to about 20 hours of work a week, that’s a good sign you should probably hire a full-time employee.
Even though 20 hours a week is the perfect amount for a part-time employee, this estimate doesn’t include:
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The monthly and “as-needed” tasks that the employee will also need to perform.
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Breathing room for interruptions, things going wrong, and things taking longer than expected.
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The expansion of the person’s duties as the company grows.
Now, if the weekly and daily tasks add up to closer to ten hours a week, it’s likely that this job is a good fit for a part-time employee.
In our receptionist example, the weekly hours add up to about 28.5 hours a week, plus 12 additional hours of work a month. This means that this role should probably be a full-time position.
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Other Factors To Consider When Calculating Work Hours
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The seasonality of the work. Many industries have busy seasons, and this affects the number of hours a job requires. If you know your business experiences significant shifts in busyness, consider calculating the time requirements for the job in both busy and low seasons.
You may find that you only need a part-time employee for most of the year but need to hire an additional part-time worker seasonally.
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Who will cover their work when they aren’t there? Running a company with a lean workforce is great – as long as everyone is always at work.
While you don’t need to have backups for every position, you do need to create some wiggle room so that your employees aren’t drowning every time someone gets sick or goes on vacation. This will also help them maintain a healthy work-life balance, in turn lowering their risk of burning out.
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The ability to expand responsibilities or cover special projects. A growing company means more tasks to cover, and an innovative company means new projects to take on.
You shouldn’t hire a new employee every time you gain five new customers or start a new project, but you should make sure that your workers aren’t so overwhelmed with work that they don’t have time to try anything new.
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Different work speeds. Say you’re running a small t-shirt company by yourself. You’re naturally best at creating new designs behind the scenes, but you have to manage customer service calls, schedule shipments, and order supplies as well.
Whenever you hire a new assistant to help you with those tasks, it’s likely that what took you five hours to complete will take your new employee – who has more experience in those areas – far less time.
This is where talking to your colleagues or professionals in the field you’re hiring for is valuable when making time estimates. They can tell you how long it should take someone trained in this area versus how long it is taking you.
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Finances. Even if you calculate that a job requires a full-time employee, the reality is you may not be able to hire someone full-time. If that’s the case, there are other options:
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Unpaid interns. If you offer college credit in exchange for interns’ work, you usually don’t have to pay them. Contact your local college or university to find out what you need to do to take advantage of this.
You may be surprised at how effective interns can be at lightening your load and adding a fresh perspective to your organization.
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Let some operations go. If it’s possible, simplifying and streamlining your business’s operations may be necessary for balancing your budget and staff with your to-do list.
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Hire an independent contractor or freelancer. This is often a cheaper way to get a project done or offload a few of your tasks. You can hire contract workers to do accounting, marketing projects, IT projects – the options are nearly endless.
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Hours of Work FAQ
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What is the minimum number of hours for full-time?
On average, 30-40 hours a week is usually the minimum number to be considered full-time. For tax purposes, the IRS considers a full-time employee to be someone who works an average of at least 30 hours a week or 130 hours a month.
Other than that, however, companies can determine what full- and part-time mean for their workers, as there is no law defining this.
Many companies say that a full-time employee works at least 35 hours a week, while part-time employees work under 35 hours a week. Some draw the line at 30 hours a week, however.
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Can I pay a part-time employee a salary?
Yes, you can pay a part-time employee a salary. However, in most states, you don’t have to provide health coverage or other benefits to part-time employees.
Some states do require this, though, so research your local laws thoroughly before hiring a part-time employee.
Author
Caitlin Mazur
Caitlin Mazur is a freelance writer at Zippia where she has written 140+ articles that have reached over 1 mil viewers as of June 2023. Caitlin is passionate about helping Zippia’s readers land the jobs of their dreams by offering content that discusses job-seeking advice based on experience and extensive research.
