Are part-time employees entitled to redundancy pay?

Is a part time employee entitled to redundancy pay? They have worked around 20-25 hours per month on a casual basis over the last 2 years.

A part time employee is entitled to statutory redundancy pay. An employee is entitled to receive statutory redundancy pay when they have 2 years’ continuous service with an organisation, so provided an employee has had their 2 year anniversary of working with you, then you are liable for paying them statutory redundancy pay even if they do not work full-time hours.

There is no minimum hours requirement to become entitled to this payment, therefore an employee who is employed to work as little as, for example, 2 hours a week for you, is still entitled to statutory redundancy pay.

There are a number of factors involved in calculating an employee’s entitlement, and one of these is the employee’s weekly pay. Consequently the pay to be received by a part- time employee will be proportionately lower than that of a full-time employee, subject to length of service and the employee’s age.

You mention that this employee has been working for you on a casual basis. This raises questions of employment status. If someone is truly a casual employee rather than a permanent member of staff it may be that, because of the nature and pattern of their work, they will struggle to establish the requisite length of service.

You will need to obtain specialist advice on the employment status of this particular employee. However, should it be found that the whole of the time he has been with you counts towards his continuous service so that he does meet the length of service requirement, then the fact that he is part time has no bearing on his entitlement to statutory redundancy pay.

Also see: Change in redundancy culture has made it worse for employees, expert claims

Alan Dobie

Alan Dobie

Alan was assistant editor at Vitesse Media Plc (previous owner of smallbusiness.co.uk) before moving on to a content producer role at Reed Business Information. He has over 17 years of experience in the...

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