Human Resource Blog

Maintaining Full Time Status

Our company currently defines full time status as working 36+ hours for field employees and 40+ hours for administrative employees. If an employe fails to maintain those hours for even 1 week, can they be forced into part time status?  This is in California.

Thanks!

Full-time or part-time status is a matter of company policy, not employment law, even in California.

The best practice in HR is to average the number of hours that the employee works over a period of 3 months or more, to determine full-time or part-time status. In your example, a field employee who averaged 35 hours per week for 3 months would be a part-time employee. A field employee who  averaged 37 hours per week over 3 months would be a full-time employee. However, there is no law that requires your company to determine full-time or part-time status in this way.

As an employer, you certainly can establish a policy that any field employee who works less than 36 hours, even for one week, is a part-time employee. This is a very strict policy, but if you have problems with one or more employees not working the expected hours, that would be one way to address it. Another way to address the problem would simply be to terminate the employee. In this economy, you should have no problem finding a qualified replacement who is willing to work the necessary hours. We will note that in California it can be more problematic to terminate an employee than in other states, so changing the employees status makes more sense.