To think your employers cannot dictate where you live?

[MinaHarker1897]

A colleague has been back at work after maternity leave for about 11 months now. She has also gone part time to three days and moved back to her hometown which is about 2 hours away. She is in work one day and works at home the other two.

I overheard a conversation between two other colleagues about this with one saying staff are "not allowed" to live a certain distance away from home. I asked her "what do you mean, not allowed? They can't dictate where someone can live" - she said they can. I've never heard of any employer being able to make these rules over staff's personal life, has anyone else?

Well as others have said they actually can, if it’s needed for the job to be within a certain distance. Or also, they may require office attendance, which could be an issue if someone moves away.

However, you’ve not said anything that would dictate this is your employer’s policy at all. Just two employees gossiping and you earwigging in.

If she has to commute two hours once a week to get into work, I can’t see that lasting, unless it’s two hours door to door.

Time would be a difficult one, when I started one job it took me 45 minutes to get there from home. 7 years later it was taking me 70 minutes! If I'd had an hour time limit I would have been snookered.

I did move a 15 minutes drive away (same distance) and the journey in then took me 35 minutes!

Yes, time can be interesting being as our public transport is 💩 and driving isn't always much better. 😬

Earwigging? You cheeky thing! In an office like ours it's impossible to not overhear.

I've known people do that for years all week - I did 20 months of 2.5hours morning then again evening door to door then company moved and then company moved and I managed to negotiate them paying a closer move.

If you just have to do it couple of days a week rather then all 5 it's doable - if you've kids in school - other job in household or house you don't want to move from sometimes you suck up long commutes for years.

My brother is a pilot. He's required to live within 30 minutes drive of a major airport. It doesn't matter which one or which country, just as long as he can get to one quickly

I was on an interview panel in which a candidate talked himself out of a job.

He lived in W Yorkshire and the job was in NW Lancs market town.

"If successful would you consider moving to be closer to the school?"

'Not really I think the journey would be ok." He was a biker and would have had to travel M62, M60, M61.

I could see the Head and Chair of Governors dismissing him from then on.

On a good day he'd have got in knackered and on a bad day we wouldn't have seen him.

Obviously you can't legally ban it or control where people move to later on, but we tend to choose not to hire people who live that far away unless it's a fully remote role.

It's generally a mix of reasons: because it's not a good quality of life for the person having to commute that long all the time - it's miserable for them, it's a waste of everyone's time because it's dead time and it makes them more exhausted and not as capable of doing the job. Plus it's not great for the environment, and days are lost by the weather, MOT being failed, public transport on strike, etc., which then means that in-person things for the rest of the team have to be rearranged and it's not always possible.

It’s not a criticism honestly I’m a self confessed nosey sod, I’d have done the same 😂

the point remains, idle gossip is hardly your employer dictating where people live

If you’re a doctor, vet etc or similar “on call” type job then it would make sense, otherwise, no I can’t see how they could demand a certain distance.

As long as you are there when you contracted to be there why should it matter to them how long your commute takes?

Of course some employers can stipulate it either as a requirement to fulfil a role (e.g. signaller or on call roles) or where a location weighting applies to salary they can require employees to live within a given boundary or forfeit the supplement.

Presuming the firm are saying they won't pay travel time or expenses over a certain maximum distance. I guess it makes sense that they wouldn't want to have the time or expense of bussing someone in from Bulgaria for one day a week. Presumably she might need to be in more often and then it would be at her own expense? As she chose to move 'too far'?

@MinaHarker1897 lots of employers have such stipulations. My contract says I have to be within commuting distance, although it doesn’t give a distance in miles (presumably because it’s possible to have a faster commute from further away if you live near an airport with lower cost domestic flights). However, seems to be more in focus now post-pandemic.

My job involves a standby rota. During those weeks I have to be able to get to the office in an hour. We are an England-wide organisation, with travel within England expected. If you don't live in England, travel costs/time are paid from the nearest office.

saying staff are "not allowed" to live a certain distance away

Most employment contracts specify a place of work- a physical office that you are also required by contract to go to for work for some or all of your hours.
So you have to live within commuting distance of that place of work for it to be physically possible to do the job.

The only exception is if your contract is a WFH/remote employment contract that allows you to work from anywhere.

check out this commute. 😅
https://metro.co.uk/2024/08/22/starbucks-ceo-1000-mile-supercommute-corporate-jet-21473085/

To think your employers cannot dictate where you live?

This ^ was your question, yes some employers can

yes but you said you've never heard of any employer being able to make those rules, whereas it is fairly common. Even then though in my experience the employer can't actually insist where the employee lives, just that when they are on call they have to be able to respond - e.g my org usually only did on av about 3 weeks each on call throughout the year so for people in the london office it was often cheaper to book a hotel and stay for the week then live in brighton or whatever. That obviously depends on the job - if you were 'always' on call or had a last minute rota then you couldn't.

Also as other people have said, they can insist on travelling to meetings/certain amount of days in office etc. A lot of people (stupidly) got caught out during this during Covid by moving further away on the assumption things would never go 'back to normal.'

So tl;dr I don't think they can specifically insist where you live but they can impose conditions that mean it would be impossible or incredibly inconvenient to live further than a certain distance away.

Yes they can make proximity to work part of your terms and conditions. We are only allowed to live a 90 minute journey away.

Yep, fairly common in aviation to have no actual rule on where or family live ....but OTOH very common to have maximum distance/or time out for "on call" periods and also possibly a maximum allowable travel time immediately prior to a normal rostered duty to avoid conflict with the various fatigue regs.

Used to be good for the B&Bs etc around airports

Well it depends on the requirements of role and what is written in their contract.
I think you are being unreasonable as you are maming a very general statement - what about the military or if the employee needs to be on call or within an hour of the office. If where an employee lives impacts their job, then it is fair that an employer can have some say in this. The employee can always find a job somewhere else??