Meaning & use
non-employee
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Meanings
nouncountablebusiness
A person who works with or visits a company but is not officially hired by it.
Grammar: Countable: one non-employee, several non-employees.
Patterns
- a non-employee of something
Non-employees must sign in at the front desk before entering the building.
The company pays consultants as non-employees, so it does not provide them with benefits.
A non-employee was found using the staff kitchen, and security was informed.
adjectivebefore a nounbusiness
Belonging to or done by someone who is not a company's employee.
Grammar: Used before a noun: non-employee directors, non-employee access.
The board includes two non-employee directors from outside the firm.
Non-employee parking is available at the back of the lot.
Non-employee workers were not covered by the staff insurance scheme.
Word forms
| plural | non-employees |
|---|
Common combinations
- non-employee director
- A non-employee director sits on the board but does not work for the company.
- non-employee worker
- The warehouse hires non-employee workers during the busy season.
- non-employee access
- Non-employee access to the lab is strictly limited.
- treat as a non-employee
- The firm treats freelance writers as non-employees for tax purposes.
Synonyms and how they differ
- contractor
- A contractor is specifically hired for a task or period, whereas a non-employee could also be a visitor or volunteer.
- freelancer
- A freelancer works independently for several clients, which is narrower than the broad label non-employee.
- outsider
- Outsider is informal and can sound unwelcoming, while non-employee is a neutral official term.
Opposites
Word family
- employee noun
- a person paid to work for an organization
- employer noun
- a person or company that hires workers
- employment noun
- the state of having paid work
- unemployed adjective
- without a job
Commonly confused: non-employee or unemployed?
non-employee vs unemployed
Unemployed means someone has no job at all, but a non-employee may be busy working for someone else or just visiting.
Practice
A freelance designer is paid per project and is not on the company payroll. The company's handbook would probably call her a ___.
Choose one answer.
Non-employee is the term for someone outside the payroll. Ex-employee means a former staff member, so it is tempting but wrong; the other forms are not standard.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “non-employee”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.