Full-Time Equivalent FTE: Definition, Calculation and More

fte definition

Below is a step-by-step guide to two common FTE calculation methods, along with an example calculation to illustrate the process. Running an organization can be like conducting a well-coordinated symphony, especially when it comes to maintaining a 12-hour working schedule,… If you have at least 50 FTEs employees, you are an ALE for the year, which means you are subject to specific reporting requirements and share responsibilities under the ACA. The IRS Taxpayer Advocate Service has an Employer Shared Responsibility Provision (ESRP) Estimator to help you determine FTEs and see if you qualify as an ALE. News, trends, analysis and breaking news alerts to help HR professionals do their jobs better each business day.

  • FTE stands for full-time equivalent and measures how many full-time employees an organization has.
  • The IRS Taxpayer Advocate Service has an Employer Shared Responsibility Provision (ESRP) Estimator to help you determine FTEs and see if you qualify as an ALE.
  • When analyzed with other metrics tied to KPIs, HR professionals can better understand the entire workforce and collaborate with managers and business leaders to successfully plan for the future.
  • Also, do not include yourself as the business owner, unless you are paid a salary and receive a W-2.
  • We’ll walk you through the platform’s features and demonstrate how Omni can transform your processes, saving you time, reducing administrative burden, and enhancing overall efficiency for your team.

How Do You Convert FTE to Hours?

Let’s say you have 100 employees, but 18 of those employees are part-time and only work 10 hours a week. Altogether, those 18 employees only account for the hours of 4.5 full-time employees. For fte meaning example, comparing the two groups over time allows an organization to find opportunities to improve efficiency when hiring seasonally or when making part-time and full-time staffing decisions.

Keeping FTE ACA-Compliant: What You Need To Know

Those employing an average of at least 50 full-time employees including full-time equivalent employees are considered to be an ALE. A full-time equivalent employee refers to a combination of part-time employees that add up to one or more full-time employees. The calculator will then tell whether you are an Applicable Large Employer or not. For instance, in terms of business, calculating FTEs can be useful in determining how many hours part-time employees should work to equal the number of hours full-time employees work. Such calculations facilitate accounting processes such as estimating wages, payroll, costs, etc.

fte definition

How Horizons Can Help You Hire Full-Time Employees

  • Many regulatory requirements, like compliance with labor laws and benefit programs, are based on Full Time Equivalent counts.
  • FTE is used in budgeting to estimate labor costs, allocate resources, and determine staffing needs based on workforce capacity.
  • It means that an employee is working the standard number of hours expected for a full-time position within your organization.
  • She can often be found testing and writing about apps meant to enhance the workflow of freelancers, remote workers, and regular employees.

To determine this amount, ask yourself, what do you expect a full-time employee to work in terms of hours per week? The answer should be between hours a week per employee (when considering full time). In the chart below, because both Carole and Lynn are full-time employees, they would each be counted as one FTE. However, determining the FTE for Jimmy and Marta requires calculation.

fte definition

fte definition

The key thing to remember with headcount is that it is one metric, and in isolation, does not provide a clear, accurate picture of what’s going on in a business. This is why HR must combine headcount with other metrics, such as FTE, and use headcount analysis to gain more insightful data. A metric shows the difference between two or more numbers, while analysis shows us why something is happening along with the impact.

  • For example, if full-time is 35 hours per week, and you have two part-time employees working 17.5 hours per week, that would total 1.0 FTE.
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  • A full-time equivalent (FTE) is a unit of measurement used to determine the amount of full-time hours worked by all employees in an organization.
  • For instance, in terms of business, calculating FTEs can be useful in determining how many hours part-time employees should work to equal the number of hours full-time employees work.
  • This number may point to one person working a full-time schedule or several people fulfilling the duties of one full-time position.

Make a List of All Employees & Hours Worked

Depending on how big a company is, the ERC is calculated differently. Companies with an average FTE below 100 receive tax relief based on all employee wages, while companies with an average FTE above 100 receive tax relief based on wages paid to employees who were not working. A simpler way of calculating FTE for PPP is to assign an FTE of 1.0 to employees working 40 or more hours per week, and an FTE of 0.5 to https://www.bookstime.com/ those who work less. The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) is designed to prevent job losses during the pandemic by giving loans to small businesses to cover payroll expenses and other costs. A portion of this loan can be forgiven based on the number of FTE workers an employer has on its payroll. More importantly, many government support programs use FTE as a basis to decide how your company should be treated.

The actual PTO an employee can accrue may depend on several factors, including years of employment that dictate an employee’s hourly PTO accrual rate. These rates will depend on the PTO accrual rate policies of a company, organization, or institution. In contrast, non-exempt positions who typically work only 28 hours per week on a 0.75 FTE schedule do not qualify, even if the employer policy defines them as full-time. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’s newest data from March 2024, private-sector US employees (excluding the farm sector) work 34.4 hours per week on average.

HR must track FTEs correctly to remain compliant and avoid penalties. For example, the Affordable Care Act in the United States requires applicable large employers to provide health insurance to employees working an average of 30+ hours (0.75 FTE). FTEs are the essential data needed to accurately forecast and manage labor costs across the organization. Each FTE represents the fully loaded expense of having one full-time permanent employee on staff. Many HRIS softwares can automate FTE calculations by incorporating data on employee hours worked, absences, time-off calendars, and more. This is how a company, on average, calculates the average yearly number of hours that a full-time employee works.

fte definition

Example FTE Calculation

Divide the total hours worked by all of your employees by the number of available full-time hours in a year (usually 2,080). This gives you the total number of hours worked by all of your employees. Managing employees, time tracking, overtime, and time-off data in disparate systems is complicated.

fte definition

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