It kind of works if the tasks can be neatly packaged and handed off for totally asynchronous work. It breaks down as soon as you need the part-time person to work with the rest of the team.
You end up forcing the rest of the team to work around one person's schedule. You also end up with someone on your team doubling up on the part-time person's knowledge if you need someone available during normal hours to answer questions or debug something.
It's not really about benefits. ACA doesn't require full benefits for someone working 20 hours a week.
Let's be honest: Many remote work jobs are essentially becoming half-time jobs, with the other half of the work week comprised of simply being available on Slack if someone asks a question.
[1] or 4 day work week or 6 hour work day or whatever suits your life at the moment
So, as I said, I “had” an employee.
Let’s count in jobs. Basically a man fully dedicated to his job 37hrs/week creates about 1 new position a year, every year, because he makes the processes so efficient that we serve 2x more customers, so we can hire. That guy and another intern, they created -1 job in a year (his project brought literally no customer) and cost us 16k€ + his salary + the intern (I pay my interns, I give hefty bonuses to everyone).
I’m not complaining, it’s my job to root out the weed and prune it, and I did a mistake, but you need to understand, as a nation, how many jobs don’t exist because employees live off their colleagues (as for my share, I have created 6 jobs myself so I’ll just collect the huge margins, I’m just vexated he doesn’t collect his margins too). In sectors where everyone thinks it’s not their jobs, people end up harassing each other for the remaining positions. In growing companies, it’s the American dream with free food. The correct middle ground is to own your product for 37 hrs a week, and not delegate questions to be solved by the employer.
Of course, people are different and this is just an anecdote, but from my personal experience (a couple of instances) I can push myself to "fully dedicate" more than 4 hours a day of mentally really hard work - for some months. After that I tell politely that sorry, it is time for me to do something else for a while. More often than not, I have been welcomed back later. Of course, those have been exceptional circumstances, typically there is no need to fully dedicate more than 4 hours of mentally really hard work, but there is some less demanding aspects of the job taking some time off.
For how long can an employee, ever year, double his efficiency and the amount of customers he serves? That just doesn't sound sustainable.
>as a nation
Which nation?
This is a lazy, cop-out answer.
Why is it that senior employees with a $500K package are expected to take zero vacation time or are subject to disrespect? Why do people pride themselves in taking no vacation, guilting their peer-level leaders in the process? I'd gladly take 11/12 of that pay in return for being able to take a full 4-6 weeks off to myself to do things I want to do in life.
Personal travel, personal project, and family time are important, and that has nothing to do with how much passion I have for the job.