# Pay, pro-rata, and the part-time trap

- **Episode:** [183](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/183.md) (2025-03-27)
- **Type:** interview
- **Tags:** pay, pro-rata, part-time
- **Time:** 8:29–10:28 (start 509s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/183?t=509](https://truthliesandwork.com/183?t=509)

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[8:29] Jeanette Ramsden: They are paid for 35 hours. For part-time workers, it's, um, one of the things that people need to— employers need to consider when, when taking this on. What it actually meant is that some of my part-time, uh, workers actually got a pay increase, um, because it is on a pro rata basis. And so, uh, we, we talk about hours now. So holidays are not holidays, they're actually holiday hours, because depending on your work pattern and your flexibility, it's not just having a day off. Um, it's, it's about how many hours you are taking off depending on your working week. So that's a little bit of a complication, but one that's worth doing. Uh, but it's a little bit of a complication that you can get. And, um, when considering moving to a 35-hour working week, if somebody was working 30 hours instead of 40 hours, if you can think on a pro rata basis, they actually needed a pay rise because Yeah. Um, not for the part-time workers because they were, uh, you know, technically increasing their hours
[9:29] Leanne Elliott: So, how did you go about implementing this? Because it was then having to be a conversation with full-time employees and saying, look, we're gonna, we're gonna reduce your salary very slightly, but—
[9:39] Jeanette Ramsden: No, no, no, we didn't, we didn't reduce anybody's salary. We just took, um, 5 hours, uh, we reduced the working week by 5 hours, and that's why we needed to increase part-timers' pay because it wouldn't have been fair and equal. The reality is we've seen no downturn in productivity, and therefore, actually, um, there wasn't— there was no hit, but people just, um, took, you know, a reduction in their hours. Um, and that's why the part-timers got an increase in their pay
[10:07] Leanne Elliott: So just so we're super clear, you went down to a reduced 35-hour working week, salaries remained the same for full-time employees, they were worked out then for people who are part-time, and because of the pro rata, some people actually got a pay rise. How does that work if people take a day off, or how does that all, all the technicalities of it work?