['Wage and Hour']
['Travel Time as Working Time', 'Hours Worked']
01/05/2024
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You have to pay an employee for all hours worked, which may include travel that is longer than an employee’s ordinary commute. An employee’s initial drive from home to alternate worksites within the usual business area should not have to be paid, but occasional driving to a distant location may extend beyond an ordinary commute.
The regulations use the term “substantial distance” to evaluate paid travel beyond an ordinary commute, but the regulations do not define this term. As a best practice, consider paying for any additional time that would be practical to record in your payroll system, such as 15 minutes.
You can subtract the time that the employee would ordinarily spend on his or her commute and pay only for the additional driving time. For example, if an employee normally spends 20 minutes commuting, but the employee must drive 60 minutes to attend an annual training session, you should only need to pay wages for the extra 40 minutes beyond the employee’s usual commute.
The regulation for how the federal government pays its employees allows for this subtraction, and you should be able to adopt a similar standard. That regulation is 5 CFR 551.422, Time spent traveling, where paragraph (b) states:
An employee who travels from home before the regular workday begins and returns home at the end of the workday is engaged in normal “home to work” travel; such travel is not hours of work. When an employee travels directly from home to a temporary duty location outside the limits of his or her official duty station, the time the employee would have spent in normal home to work travel shall be deducted from hours of work ...
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['Wage and Hour']
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