What Is Full-Time Equivalent (FTE)?

Full-time equivalent is a unit used to measure employee workload and resource availability in a team. An FTE is based on a standard full-time work schedule and indicates the relation between it and what’s being measured. Given that full-time schedules can vary from one jurisdiction to the other, a full-time equivalent may not be the same everywhere around the globe.

How many hours is a full-time equivalent?

Typically, a full-time equivalent is 40 work hours per week. This is the standard full-time work schedule in many places across the globe. However, in jurisdictions where the standard work week is different, an FTE will be different as well. For example, a full-time schedule in France is 35 hours per week, so an FTE for a French company would be 35 weekly hours.

How to calculate FTE work hours in your freelance team?

To calculate FTE hours in your team of freelancers, you first need to track how many hours your staff have worked in total. The best way to do this is with automated time tracking software like WebWork. The app will provide you with not only detailed time data but also clock in and out times, daily activity reports, and more.

Once you have tracked time data for a given week, simply divide it by the number of weekly full-time hours. For example, if your staff tracked 100 hours in a week, they effectively did the work of 2.5 FTE employees.