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Committing to part-timers: a credit union's special focus on part-time employees offers a case study on how to make such workers productive members of the team.

Article Excerpt
Customers want service at all hours of the day--and night. Employees want to achieve balance between time on the job and time for their personal lives. What's an employer to do?

One way, of course, to provide service during the hours that don't appeal to full-time, long-term workers is to hire part-time workers. For some employers, part-timers are important to the overall business plan, and they're treated not as add-ons to the payroll but as important contributors integrated into the overall workforce.

Digital Federal Credit Union (DCU), headquartered in Marlborough, Mass., has been weaving its part-time staff into its operations for years. DCU, which has 547 employees--105 of whom work part time--has learned that its methods of recruiting, scheduling and treating part-time workers are crucial for attracting good candidates and for keeping part-time employees coming back.

Cindy Romano, PHR, the credit union's manager of HR, says the company's success with its part-time workforce stems from two corporate traits. First, DCU treats part-time employees as respected members of the team--worth the company's investments in recruitment and training, and, DCU hopes, willing to return. Second, Romano says, DCU provides a generous, competitive benefits package that part-time workers find attractive.

Clearly, DCU is doing something right in managing its staff. In 2006, for the third straight year, the company was named one of the 50 Best Small & Medium Companies to Work for in America by the Great Place to Work Institute in a recognition program sponsored by the Society for Human Resource Management.

Meeting Customer Demand

Organizations such as DCU turn to part-time staffing for many reasons, but chiefly for greater flexibility, says Lisa Bordinat, senior vice president and director of consulting services for Aon Consulting's Talent Solutions Group in Southfield, Mich. "It's really a business decision that allows organizations to be more nimble from a staffing perspective," Bordinat says. Managing a part-time or contingent workforce, she says, allows organizations to incur employment costs only when they need to--when demand for their products or services...