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It was created to measure part-time employment in terms of full-time hours. In other words, an employer who has both full-time and part-time workers can quantify all hours worked in terms of full-time employment. For example, if two part-time employees each work four hours per day for 10ten days apiece during a weekly pay period, their 40-hour combined total represents 1.0one FTE on the company’s payroll for that pay period. What’s important is that “on average” they work under 30 hours a week.
Employers should understand state and local laws that require them to define full-time employment at their company. The laws may involve meals/breaks, fair workweek or PTO obligations. To find out if you have an average of 50 full-time equivalents for the calendar year, simply add together your total FTEs per month and divide your total by 12. To find out how many full-time equivalent employees you have, multiply the number of part-time employees you have by the number of hours they work per month . Rather than hiring new employees, businesses can use FTE to deploy staff across various departments thereby keeping costs down. Depending on the type of work that is required, management can decide the number of full-time employees that are needed for a particular project and assign employees to those positions accordingly. For example, if an employer considers 40 hours per week as full-time, employees who work 40 hours each per week count as 1.0 FTE, while those that work 20 hours per week, or part-time, make 0.5 FTE.
Calculating FTE for the Small Business Tax Credit
Some are part-time workers, others only work during certain months of the year, others have flexible schedules, others work during one project, and so on. FTE has several different uses and several different calculation methods, depending on why you want to calculate it. It will help you plan your project work in regards to deadlines and your budget.
First, let’s look at what full-time equivalent or FTE actually means. The full time equivalent, often abbreviated as FTE is an indicator that reflects an employee’s productive capacity. An FTE of 1.0, for example, corresponds to the hours worked in a day for a full-time employee. Consequently, the FTE for a part-time employee working 20 hours a week would be 0.5. Let’s say you have 100 employees, but 18 of those employees are part-time and only work 10 hours a week. Altogether, those 18 employees only account for the hours of four and half full-time employees.
Eligibility for the PPP (Paycheck Protection Program)
This calculation is sometimes done by taking the number of total hours worked by all part-time employees and dividing by the number of hours that are considered to be a full-time schedule. There are multiple reasons to calculate full-time equivalents using various calculation methods. Planning for project work in an organization by setting deadlines and a budget becomes more accessible using this tool.
Affordale Care Act Guidelines for Employers: What is a Full Time Employee (FTE)? https://t.co/xUmMlYG5Kl #insurance
— goodassurance (@good_assurance) November 1, 2017
Generally, employees work 8-hour shifts for five days every week. The ACA makes health coverage a shared responsibility of individuals, employers, and the government to ensure that as many people as possible have affordable health insurance. While the law doesn’t require all business organizations to offer health insurance to their workers, employers who have 50 or more FTEs and are therefore considered ALEs must comply with the employer mandate. Thankfully, a business owner can easily confirm their ALE status. The Affordable Care Act requires every employer with 50 or more full-time employees working at least 30 hours per week to offer health insurance to its employees. Several federal programs in the United States—such as the Paycheck Protection Program —use FTE to determine employer eligibility.
The role of FTE in calculating eligibility for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP)
If the total is at least 50, the employer is an ALE and is required to offer health insurance to all qualifying employees. The PPP is an SBA program that helps preserve a business in times of crisis. The total FTEs number is used to calculate the loan that borrowers are eligible for. To calculate the FTE metric, find the average number of FTEs per month from two different time periods . 0.5 FTE is the number of hours required for a part-time worker, approximately 20 hours per week. 0.5 FTE is typically used for positions such as project managers, supervisors, overheads, and strategists, where it isn’t necessary to be present for the entirety of the workweek, as the job can be done in fewer hours.
To calculate FTE correctly, you’ll need to quantify your total weekly available work hours; it’s an important component of the calculation. Available hours per week is the number of hours your business considers standard work time multiplied by the number of employees you require to accomplish those related needs. Salaried employees who work full time or are expected to work a full-time schedule (even if they don’t report their actual hours each week) are considered full-time employees in both cases. FTE stands for full-time equivalent and is used by businesses to calculate the total number of full-time hours worked within their business among all employees. A full-time employee is equal to one FTE; a part-time employee is equal to 0.5 FTE. The FTE employee doesn’t have to actually exist, and can be a combination of part-time employees. For example, if your entire staff works part-time, the FTE employee is a hypothetical full-time worker by which your part-time workers are measured.
Knowing the difference between a full-time employee, a part-time employee, and an equivalent employee is a good place to start. Proper calculations are crucial for the organization to ensure you’re meeting employer mandate regulations, submitting proper reporting, and avoiding costly penalties. As such, you may consider making it your internal company policy to calculate your employees’ average hours per week and your FTEs every year to maintain an accurate picture of your organization. Lastly, add the number of full-time employees you have to the full-time equivalent of your part-time employees to get your total FTEs for your organization.
- Many employers often wonder what the difference is between a full-time employee and a full-time equivalent employee.
- When calculating FTE, make sure your payroll data is easily accessible since you’ll need this information to complete your calculations.
- The employees in excess of 50 employed during the 120-day time period are seasonal workers.
- However, many employers do offer vacation to part-time employees, usually on a pro rata basis.
The 40-hour workweek calculation is applicable if you are doing the math for accounting and business purposes. However, FTEs are calculated differently for different purposes. Full-time equivalent is a unit of measure that helps employers calculate the number of hours worked by all employees in their company. For this example, let’s take a look at using the first method from above. Your average number of full-time equivalent employees during the reference period was 5. Add together your full-time employees and your FTE part-time employees to get your full-time equivalent employees. Divide the total part-time employees’ hours by the total hours an employee must work to be full time .
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You can create various combinations, depending on your business needs. That means that you have seven employees, totaling 170 hours per fte meaning week. To find your full-time equivalents for the calendar year, add together your total FTEs per week and divide your total by 52 .
- That means that you have seven employees, totaling 170 hours per week.
- This calculation provides a convenient way to quantify how many theoretically “whole” full-time employees are on the company payroll, even if the majority of your workforce is actually part time.
- And if an employee works a full 40-hour week, their FTE value would be 1.0 (40 hours worked / 40 hours).
- These rates will depend on PTO accrual rate policies of a company, organization, or institution.
- Add together your full-time and FTE part-time employees to get your total full-time equivalent employees.
- An FTE count and headcount are different methods of measuring business size, but they serve different purposes.