To say that travel to various work locations count as work time?

[Beaniesmumsie]

I just had a very good job interview with a big organisation and I’m feeling like they’ll offer me the job, they have many offices dotted around the country including Scotland, it’s a WFH position with HQ down south (I’m in the Midlands so about 3 hours drive). I was asked how comfortable I am with travelling and I said fine as long as it counts as work time. However they said they expect people to travel during their own time (not for big trips like to Scotland but they expect me to travel to HQ twice a month) and then do a full work day. Is this normal? In my previous jobs any travelling away from your place of work counts as work time.

I know if I get offered I’ll clarify with them to make sure I’m not misunderstanding them, but it’s gonna be a big sticking point for me.

YANBU - yes you should travel outside of core work hours
YABU - you had it lucky with previous jobs where travel to different offices count as work time

Did you get offered? To be honest you might have come across as a bit of potential PITA staying you'd only ever travel in work time, especially for a senior position. But if that's a deal breaker for you better to get it out in the open.
I don't travel, but DH does and he'll often fly on a Sunday evening to be ready for a Mondya meeting, but may travel back in working hours at the end of the week, but will be working whilst travelling. Its just part and parcel of modern work I think.

Well if you have an 8 hour work day and want to spend 6 hrs of that driving that's pretty pointless.

I wfh, and when I need to go into the office (just over an hour) I tend to either get in for normal time and leave earlier or get in a bit later and leave at a normal time. But I tend to work on the train.

So I suppose I - unofficially - do a mix. But my work isn't really a clock in clock out type of role.

I WFH but if I have to go into the office during the middle of the day for a meeting my travel time has to be made back up because its during my working hours and I'm technically not working while I'm driving. Feel for you with the 3 hours though, mine not so bad.

If someone asked me at interview stage if commuting would be part of working hours because they live far away that would ring alarm bells about entitlement to me! Commuting to the contracted head office is always in your own time and at your own cost.

I would expect an hours commute in my own time, everyone working out of the home has got to travel prior to their actual start time.

So say your work day begins at 9am I would expect to start travelling at 8am, then the arrival time should be set for however long it takes from then onwards

This is the legal position. You take out usual commuting time. And the rest of the travel time to a non-work location is counted as work hour. If you do this outside core hours, you need to be paid for it / offered time in lieu.

If the company has all staff, including junior staff on/ around the NMW and they do not pay/ offer time back they are breaching national minimum wage rules. They may also be breaching the working time directive, dependent on the additional hours/ frequency.

OP said they had multiple offices and they were being asked for regular (but not weekly) travel to offices that were not their home office. That is not covered by commuting.

Driving to your office that you are based at (even if you work from home mostly) can't be claimed for tax reasons

I wfh in Scotland but travel around the UK.

Any travel I do outside core hours I get back as TOiL. Plus an audio half day TOIL for any overnights.

They are taking the piss if they expect your travel to be on your own time.

No thanks

as a home worker any work outside of your working hours should count as working time

So either your working day includes travel and therefore you spend less time in the office as your travel is counted in your working day

but I wouldn’t be travelling in my own time especially for a big company

I’d say a bit of both.

i used to have to travel to london - by train- fairly often. It’s 3 hours from here so normally I’d do 10-4.30ish in the office and travel either side. However I’d sometimes do some work on the train too.

It depends how senior you are. At a certain level, there is no such thing as TOIL.

Bluntly, it's what you get paid £100k+ for.

It's good to know their policy but in reality it's normally a case of give and take. You would not be expected to get to an office 5 hours away for a 9am start without an overnight stay, but 3 hours and 10am start most people would consider reasonable once in a while.

Equally there will be days when you want to nip out in your normal working day to see your kids' sports day or whatever.

I've never known any workplace where anyone has counted hours to make sure they are 100% balanced, as long as everyone is treated well and the work gets done. Admittedly I've never worked in a place that has billable hours, timesheets etc when I guess it might be different. If you end up working somewhere where you have to nitpick about stuff like this, I would think it would not be a pleasant working environment for other reasons also.

Just to clarify, it was advertised as a WFH position and I’m actually very close to some of their midlands office (where I know a lot of the projects are based out of). Unfortunately it’s not a massively senior position (about £43k) and it’s a different sector, that’s why I wanted to see how other work places approach this. None of the offices can be reached by train so I can’t work when I’m travelling (bar a few phone calls maybe). Oh well I’ll see if I get offered the position first before negotiating with them, but thank you all for sharing your experiences