Post-pandemic scheduling is hurting part-time workers’ financial and mental well-being

For the  majority of employees, new-found flexibility in the workplace has changed the game personally and professionally. But for hourly employees, the loss of structure is setting them up for failure.  

Part-time workers make up 20% of the employed U.S. workforce, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And since the start of the pandemic — which created staffing problems across the country — part-time workers are nearly 10% more likely to experience slightly or extremely unpredictable schedules, which is starting to take a toll, according to new research conducted by Paychex and Future Workplace. 

“The pandemic has started this conversation around essential hourly workers — in grocery stores, hospitality and retail — and where someone works,” says Jeanne Meister, the founder of Future Workplace. “But now the focus [needs to be] on when they work, how much predictability they have and what happens when they don't have it in their work lives and in their personal lives.” 

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The pandemic undeniably disrupted the workforce, with over a hundred million employees losing their jobs and thousands of businesses forced to close or adjust. As businesses looked for ways to stay open with a depleted labor market, the first thing to go was a loss of structure for their hourly employees, with many working more hours, having their shifts cut or moved without notice, or working much less. 

“Schedule instability has definitely been made worse because of COVID,” Meister says. “And [part-time workers] are now raising their hand to say it's really hard to have a personal life when there's so much wild fluctuations in when they work. What they're looking for is some type of control.” 

An instability in scheduling affects more than just their relationship with work. Eighty-five percent are saying that their current work schedules are impacting their emotional and financial well-being: 42% of part-time workers reported working fewer hours per-week during the pandemic, leading to 34% expressing feelings of financial distress and higher stress.  

“Imagine if your job said you’d work about 30 hours a week and you plan your life on those 30 hours,” Meister says. “And then week by week you're working less, or maybe you're not even working Monday through Friday, or maybe now you're working on the weekends.” 

For older employees, this could result in rising childcare costs as working parents are forced to work outside of their regular hours, according to Meister. And for employees with multiple part-time jobs, it could cause bigger scheduling conflicts that could begin to make it hard to make ends meet. 

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And should it not be resolved, the consequences can be incredibly damaging.

“This is ripe for class action lawsuits,” Meister says. “If they're being promised something during the interview process and it's not being delivered to them time and again, part-time workers are going to start asking: what legal action can I take?”

There are some laws already in place requiring employers to have predictable pay. But there’s still a lot of heavy lifting to do on the employers’ end, such as taking advantage of free tools and resources to provide things like split-schedules and job sharing. 

Even simpler yet, employers should be taking regular employee surveys, as well as putting training managers on how to have these conversations at the recruiting level. 

“There is a pretty big disconnect between leaders and the day-to-day lives of hourly workers and what they have to grapple with,” Meister says. “We have the opportunity to give  hourly and part-time workers a voice that they haven't had.”