'Reasonable' travel time when based from home
Discussion
Sorry, long post.
I've got a team of seven employees, of whom five work from our base and two work from home. The job consists of driving to one or more business premises and working on site. I also do elements of this myself, as well as managing the department.
We work an 8.5 hour day with an unpaid 30 minute break in there somewhere, so 8 hours in employer-speak. Most of the staff based here (including me) will frequently go straight to a site in the morning, or straight home at the end of the day. The 'unwritten rule' is that you should leave home/get home at the same time as normal, or if you are going straight in because an early start is required then you should get home proportionately early. Neither this arrangement, or any other clarifying rule is mentioned in any company rulebook or contract. All my staff based from HQ are completely happy with this rule.
The fly in the ointment is the two staff who go straight to sites every day as they live an hour from site, having come from a company that we bought out. Mainly one guy ( this guy, funnily enough). They believe that their 8 hour day starts when they leave the house and ends when they get home, a fact I only recently became aware of. The particular bloke refuses to take a lunch break so expects to leave the house and get home 8 hours later. For comparison, with my hour commute I work a 10.5 hour day in these terms.
He has two particular days that involve 1.5 hours travel each way to a large site miles from any other jobs of ours, so only spends 5 hours on site there each day. My sales person has just sold a small job round the corner so I have no choice but to add it to this pair of days. Matey is saying that he just can't get the job done, whereas I know that there's plenty of time (I was covering the 2 days in a day all summer while he was on his last bout of "sickness", despite living further away) if he works by the same rule as the rest of us, but the dilemma is what to class as reasonable travel.
I have proposed to my manager that I establish what the average commute of all the other staff is (~20 minutes each way at a guess) and deem this 'reasonable travel time', so that taking into account the lunch break it is quite fair for me to expect matey to work 9h10m door to door. I then propose that this rule is established in writing for all staff henceforth, namely that 'reasonable travel' is either the length of their normal commute, or if they don't normally commute, the team average.
In reality he won't have to do this on most days, but it will be a fair yardstick of what constitutes the maximum normal working day door-to-door.
Am I being fair?
I've got a team of seven employees, of whom five work from our base and two work from home. The job consists of driving to one or more business premises and working on site. I also do elements of this myself, as well as managing the department.
We work an 8.5 hour day with an unpaid 30 minute break in there somewhere, so 8 hours in employer-speak. Most of the staff based here (including me) will frequently go straight to a site in the morning, or straight home at the end of the day. The 'unwritten rule' is that you should leave home/get home at the same time as normal, or if you are going straight in because an early start is required then you should get home proportionately early. Neither this arrangement, or any other clarifying rule is mentioned in any company rulebook or contract. All my staff based from HQ are completely happy with this rule.
The fly in the ointment is the two staff who go straight to sites every day as they live an hour from site, having come from a company that we bought out. Mainly one guy ( this guy, funnily enough). They believe that their 8 hour day starts when they leave the house and ends when they get home, a fact I only recently became aware of. The particular bloke refuses to take a lunch break so expects to leave the house and get home 8 hours later. For comparison, with my hour commute I work a 10.5 hour day in these terms.
He has two particular days that involve 1.5 hours travel each way to a large site miles from any other jobs of ours, so only spends 5 hours on site there each day. My sales person has just sold a small job round the corner so I have no choice but to add it to this pair of days. Matey is saying that he just can't get the job done, whereas I know that there's plenty of time (I was covering the 2 days in a day all summer while he was on his last bout of "sickness", despite living further away) if he works by the same rule as the rest of us, but the dilemma is what to class as reasonable travel.
I have proposed to my manager that I establish what the average commute of all the other staff is (~20 minutes each way at a guess) and deem this 'reasonable travel time', so that taking into account the lunch break it is quite fair for me to expect matey to work 9h10m door to door. I then propose that this rule is established in writing for all staff henceforth, namely that 'reasonable travel' is either the length of their normal commute, or if they don't normally commute, the team average.
In reality he won't have to do this on most days, but it will be a fair yardstick of what constitutes the maximum normal working day door-to-door.
Am I being fair?
Edited by Johnnytheboy on Friday 2nd April 09:45
Sounds like you're being a bit soft to me. Places I've worked expected me to arrive and be on-site during my paid hours. Once there travel between sites would be counted as 'paid'.
How do the clients feel about paying for a days work and only having him turn up for 1/2 a day?
While I sometimes like skipping lunch and going home early, I've heard that there may be rules against this. (Working too long in one stretch type stuff.)
How do the clients feel about paying for a days work and only having him turn up for 1/2 a day?
While I sometimes like skipping lunch and going home early, I've heard that there may be rules against this. (Working too long in one stretch type stuff.)
well under working time directive rules, if based at home then your day starts as soon as you leave base, i work in haulage and a driver for me who drives a company commercial vehicle to go to work should commence start of duty as soon as he leaves. 8 hours is a short day though ..... u got any jobs ? 
If you are home based, your time starts there as that is your 'main' place of employment. Full stop as it is part of the definition.
It does not matter what your nornal day/week is.
My last team were UK based (Eng/Wales) govt enforcers. When they left home that was their start time. It depends what is in the emp contract
TUPE issues can cause lots of conflict as terms may differ.
The above is simple, but sadly in mgt that is often not the case!
It does not matter what your nornal day/week is.
My last team were UK based (Eng/Wales) govt enforcers. When they left home that was their start time. It depends what is in the emp contract
TUPE issues can cause lots of conflict as terms may differ.
The above is simple, but sadly in mgt that is often not the case!
Last post interesting.
AFAIK nothing in their contracts mentions being home based, they are merely given local work to them (Hants) for operational reasons. So if I wanted to I could give them local work to us (Dorset) and expect them to drive down each day, but it would achieve nothing for the business.
AFAIK nothing in their contracts mentions being home based, they are merely given local work to them (Hants) for operational reasons. So if I wanted to I could give them local work to us (Dorset) and expect them to drive down each day, but it would achieve nothing for the business.
With my own company I expect the first hour of travel at the beginning and end of each day to be in the employee's own time. I know a large company that we do work for the figure is 1.5 hours. So that can be up to a 12 hour day including lunch. If you are contracted for 8 hours a day, that is 8 hours working. Any travel between jobs in the day is part of the working day.
I think you need to go check the contracts. If it states they are based at home, tehn their day starts as soon as they leave home, if they are going to site. (Do they always go to site each day, or is their admin etc they do from home BTW?)
But if the contract does not state that, it should state another location as their perm place of work.
I dont know what business you are in, but you mention vans. The place of work is important for many businesses and employees as it denotes what taxable benefit can be paid for things like van use and fuel etc, and what expenses (if applicable) can be claimed by the employee.
So it should be denoted somewhere, either in their contracts or in their originla offer letter, as it has quite far reaching implications.
As for the practical aspects of their work, if they are given a day to do a job, and they do it properly on the day, it shouldn't matter too much unless a client gets the arse for charging a day but not being there a day. I've had this with one of my good guys, who used to get away from one place at about 4pm eahc day he was there, but he got the job done very well. I passified the client that the hours were reaonsable, he got the job done in the shorter time as he prepared a lot of work ahead of time before going to site, (which he did but others did too!)
If he is not offically based at home per his contract, he may claim it has "always been like this". Fair enough, but then look into any negative tax implications of him using the co van for "private travel" which may be deemed to be any actual jobs he goes to where the distance is less than the distance he would "normally" have to go to to get to the office. Its not quite that simple, the distance from the office to the client also comes into it, but you can be sure, if he is officially based at an office, and works from home, HMRC will want a piece of him!
Difficult when you have one taking things to the letter of the law and the others are playing ball.
But if the contract does not state that, it should state another location as their perm place of work.
I dont know what business you are in, but you mention vans. The place of work is important for many businesses and employees as it denotes what taxable benefit can be paid for things like van use and fuel etc, and what expenses (if applicable) can be claimed by the employee.
So it should be denoted somewhere, either in their contracts or in their originla offer letter, as it has quite far reaching implications.
As for the practical aspects of their work, if they are given a day to do a job, and they do it properly on the day, it shouldn't matter too much unless a client gets the arse for charging a day but not being there a day. I've had this with one of my good guys, who used to get away from one place at about 4pm eahc day he was there, but he got the job done very well. I passified the client that the hours were reaonsable, he got the job done in the shorter time as he prepared a lot of work ahead of time before going to site, (which he did but others did too!)
If he is not offically based at home per his contract, he may claim it has "always been like this". Fair enough, but then look into any negative tax implications of him using the co van for "private travel" which may be deemed to be any actual jobs he goes to where the distance is less than the distance he would "normally" have to go to to get to the office. Its not quite that simple, the distance from the office to the client also comes into it, but you can be sure, if he is officially based at an office, and works from home, HMRC will want a piece of him!
Difficult when you have one taking things to the letter of the law and the others are playing ball.
Not sure if it’s much help but.
I have recently been tupe'd over to a new company myself. They changed us from working on one site to working from home covering several sites. To account for this they changed our working hours from 8.5 to 8.5 with 2 hours unpaid "travel time".
One guy that moved over with us was happy to work from home but claimed that they were not allowed to change his working hours to 10.5, he took legal advice on this and never mentioned it again.
It seems it pretty standard practice for my new company to do this and an hour’s travel allowance each way is perfectly acceptable. They are a large IT company who have done this a lot over the last 5 years and employ over 5000 people.
I have recently been tupe'd over to a new company myself. They changed us from working on one site to working from home covering several sites. To account for this they changed our working hours from 8.5 to 8.5 with 2 hours unpaid "travel time".
One guy that moved over with us was happy to work from home but claimed that they were not allowed to change his working hours to 10.5, he took legal advice on this and never mentioned it again.
It seems it pretty standard practice for my new company to do this and an hour’s travel allowance each way is perfectly acceptable. They are a large IT company who have done this a lot over the last 5 years and employ over 5000 people.
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