Working hours - travel to work time within contracted hours?

[FoxRedBitch]

If your job entailed going out to do you job (i.e sales person) and your working hours are say 1pm until 7pm. Would you expect for your travel time to your first appointment to be after 1pm, or would you expect to leave home at 1pm?

With regards to distance, this varies up to a maximum of about 30 minutes.

Any thoughts?

If it's only 30mins I would expect you to be at the first call at 1pm.

I would expect first client to be from 1pm. You aren’t paid to get to work, you’re paid from when you start.

Arrive for 1pm. Travel between appointments is during working hours.

Stand to be corrected on the "official" response, i'd assume your hours start when you get to your first appointment with those commute times, unless your contract says working from home.

Thank you, sorry I worded that incorrectly.

I pay someone from 1pm until 7pm but most days they don't leave home until 1pm and then the work is rushed and sometimes not finished.

Hmm, I need to tackle this one, thank you.

I'm glad its new year. I time for new policies and procedures and looking towards some change and improvements.

I wouldn't say travelling to work locally should be included in your working hours. Travelling between your appointments should be done in work time.
Only exception should be if you get sent away for work (like if you get sent to a conference the other side of the county) then the traveling time should be in work hours.

I think it would be worth clarifying this with HR / check contract etc. I agree, most jobs you don’t get paid for travelling and I agreed with PPs until I thought about my DP, he often has to travel for his work (shopfitter) and those days he’s is out of town he is paid from the moment he is collected / leaves of driving to when he is back home.

Cross posted. If you’re managing this situation I think you need to clarify your own contracts etc, and as you’ve said, outline the correct procedures and policies.

You need to ask your employer what their expectations are because any speculation on here isn't necessarily going to agree.

If you are home based, it could be argued that all time out of the house is working time, so you should set off at 1, but equally, if you occasionally go into the office, then you should treat the first 30 mins as being like commuting time and you should aim to be actually at appointments between 1 and 7.

Of course, your employer may consider that you need to work however many hours needed to meet your targets, which maybe more than those hours anyway.

If you pay her from 1pm, then she needs to leave home so she's at her first appointment by 1pm.

This case looks relevant.

www.crunch.co.uk/knowledge/employment/travel-and-working-times-regulations/

I used to have a job visiting different sites each day. My working day started from when I left home as I wasn't going to my usual place of work.

I think it depends on whether it's a fixed base of work or she goes to different places. If the latter, then I suspect work starts from when she leaves home to travel.

I am a sales person on a home based contract. My hours are between 9-5.30. I am never expected to travel to an appointment I. My own time, therefore the first appointments are normally 10.30-11am to allow for travel time. Clearly there are times when I do. The latest I leave client site is 4pm to allow for travel home. I do hours above and beyond my contracted hours, often do meeting prep in the evening and choose to catch a train at 7am some days but this isn’t expected by my employer. I do this to sell more and earn more.

Thank you.

She doesn't have a usual place of work. She carries out work at different places daily.

Our registered office address in on contract which is about 5 miles from her home, but she never has need to go to our registered office.

My contract specifies this. My contract says I start work at the building where I'm based, but that my employer can ask me to work at any site. So if they move me to another site, and I have to travel further, then that's my loss.

However, i worked in a place where we were all relocated to another site. Those who has a longer commute were given some monetary compensation to ease the burden, for a few months.

Sorry, missed your update. If you are paying them for those hours then it is reasonable that they're at the first appointment at 1 pm. Also that the work is carried out to a good standard.

However you should ensure that the workload is reasonable and if the worker experiences delays that are not their fault such as traffic during the working day or an appointment taking longer than expected then they should be paid for the extra time, or at least get the time back later.

You need to tell your employee that the expectation is that he/she will be at the first appointment at 1pm and will leave the last appointment at 7pm. Travel between appointments is part of the job, but everyone working in an office or retail or wherever, has to be at their workplace at the start time and doesn’t leave until the finish time.

Time, as you say, to put your policies and procedures in place. Your employee can’t then say they are unclear.

Ah cross-posted. Yes, my DH sometimes works in different places from his main office and his working day starts on those days when he leaves home and he also claims mileage for those journeys. If she has a registered office then she could go there first on her own time but that doesn't practically make much difference as she'll just get there for 1 and then have to go out again.

The ECJ ruling states that if a worker doesn't have a fixed workplace then travel to the first job and home again at the end of the day is paid work time. It was in the news at the time as it applies to on the road sales people, engineers, plumbers etc who don't have a fixed office location. So yes you should be paying her from 1pm but appointments should start later dependent on how long it takes her to drive from home to the appointment.

Sounds like her main base in her home. If that’s the case, then she leaves her base at 1.
I’m home based and if I was paid between 1 and 7, I would leave ‘base’ at 1 and be back by 7.

This is actually a quite complicated bit of law which I've tried (unsuccessfully) to resolve at previous work place.

Ultimately, the person doesn't have a fixed place of work and therefore this might be of interest -

[https://sasdaniels.co.uk/blog/2019/02/05/do-you-have-to-pay-your-employees-for-their-travel-time-to-and-from-work/]

Try again for clicky...

sasdaniels.co.uk/blog/2019/02/05/do-you-have-to-pay-your-employees-for-their-travel-time-to-and-from-work/

Same as Mixingitall. I'd make appointments to fit in with getting there and back within my working hours.

Where are these appointments? Who is making them?

I work from home, so if I have to meet a customer I generally won't leave the house until after 7.45 (my dd catches the bus to school then), and I'll generally get home about 6 at the latest. But I have enough trust and flexibility in my role to schedule my own meetings and look after my own calendar. On occasions I'll work outside these hours with overnight stays. But that's the exception.

I work remotely quite frequently, have appointments outside my usual place of work. I usually try to arrange them so I would leave at the same time I would to get to my office; so if they're an hour and and a half away then I put them in the diary for 9.30 rather than 9, as I'd have to leave at 8 which is when I usually leave for work. This is more for childcare reasons than anything else but feels more reasonable than saying that it's not my usual place of work so I have to do it within my contracted hours.

When I had to use the M25 a lot to travel to appointments I'd also arrange them so that I didn't need to get on the motorway before 9 as any time before that was 'wasted' - I'd rather do an hour at home and then leave than leave at 7.30 and still not be there two hours later.