How to set hours for a part time driver when hours required varies day on day ?

property.advert

Part time driver wanted to deliver goods in the evening. Maximum hours are 17:30 to 22:30. In the beginning for certain, the hours will not be this extensive, finishing earlier.

OK, option 1 is to simply pay for the maximum number of hours and suffer the downtime. Good for employee, bad for business.

Option 2 is to make the job purely as required and pay solely for the hours worked. Good for employer, bad for employee and risky that the employee will work on a go slow to eke out the work available.

Option 3 is probably somewhere in the middle, perhaps with some guaranteed minimum. Advice on this would help.

paulwf

Put them on a zero hours contract and just pay them for what they work. If you are totally up front about it before you take them on then you shouldn't have problems retaining staff, some people just want a small income boost from a second job. It is also good to have some balance and try to make sure they have a sensible number of hours and not take advantage of their zero hours status.

Productivity targets need to be established and monitored. Alternatively a lot of courier work is now self employed with the courier just paid per drop. Naturally you'd have to investigate the legalities of this as you can't just switch between employed and self employed staff, it depends on the guidelines set by HMRC.

paddyrg

With formal hours comes a lack of flexibility for both you and the driver - if you can do a zero-hour contract it may be worth 'employing' 2 drivers, with a flexible rota - better still see if a family or pair of friends wants to split it between them so they can work out their own cover and shifts.

Also worth thinking about - whose vehicle is used and who pays for the insurance and wear.