Do I pay for travel time?

A question about : Do I pay for travel time?

Hello

I was informed today by one of my staff that I should be paying for their time to travel from job to another within the working day. I run a cleaning business and they usually have 4 to 5 different jobs per day. I pay well over the minimum wage (Ј8 per hour for the cleaners and Ј9 for the supervisor). Who is right?

Thanks you

Best answers:

• Not sure on the legal position, but morally of course you should pay them.
• PS good on you for paying a living wage (assuming outside London).
• Whether you are obliged to pay them for their travel time depends on what it says in their terms and conditions. And it's not at all uncommon for companies providing home care NOT to pay for travel time, and not to pay mileage either. I don't know how common it is for the same to apply to cleaners: most I've known have been fully self-employed.
  Are your cleaners on 'zero hours' contracts, ie you pay them for the hours they work, rather than guaranteeing a set no. of hours each week? If so, there are a couple of things you might want to think about. While that suits some people very well - because they can turn down hours - it's not so good for those who need a regular income. You could have a mix of 'regular' and 'as and when' staff if that would help you manage a fluctuating workflow. And you know you have to pay holiday pay, even for 'zero hours' contracts, don't you?
  If you were paying for travel time, it would obviously be in your interests to plan their routes carefully and group jobs sensibly.
  Also, it's worth YOU knowing the answers to these questions, or having a reliable advisor you can turn to. When we talk about 'advice you can rely on', we mean 'advice that if it turns out to be wrong you can sue the pants off whoever gave it to you'. Clearly what we say here is not 'reliable': and an employer needs to be sure of their ground. You can't just make it up as you go along.
  With the person telling you (wrongly) that you 'should' be paying for their travel time, you could perhaps have a discussion about how that would become affordable. It would defiinitely be worth you working out what their hourly rate looks like once you have allowed for travel time - as dacouch says, if you've got a couple of hours between jobs, it does make a difference! Would a lower hourly rate for more hours be any better?
• if they are travelling from job to job then yes you should pay them.
  i get paid when i travel from job to job.
  and i am not on min wage.
• Do they have a workplace base or are they travelling from home to jobs?
• You have to ask yourself why would anyone work for a company who doesn't reimburse them properly if they could do the job without the company? What your cleaners do is provide a service with you getting the jobs, paying them a decent rate and giving a modicum of security.. ie they don't have to hunt down work. I assume they also get holiday pay etc. Surely all this is built into the costs of the business and is reflected in the charges to the customer?
  I work self employed because I refused to work for a company that wouldn't compensate me either time or costs for travelling between jobs. I traded paid holidays for autonomy, a better relationship with my clients, a decent level of pay (I set the rates which of course are judged partly by what the market will bear) and the marginal trouble of filling in my tax return every year.
  IMO, it's incredibly mean not to reimburse your staff for their travelling time... they can't do anything else with that time so they are working for you. Of course, what I say doesn't matter. But, are you willing to disgruntle your staff and by proxy sour the relationships with your clients who ultimately pay all of you?
  If you look after your staff you will be rewarded many times over with loyalty and a good reputation and reputation counts for a lot
• You might also have to factor in scheduled breaks, either unpaid or paid. I have no idea how it works out but there is a possibility that if travel time is considered as work then if they work over 6 hours in a shift you need to allow a break time.
  OP your wage is very generous, remember a lot of your competitors may be paying the same but that will be on a self employed basis so the take home pay of the employee will be less as no holiday pay etc. You may have to reduce your hourly rate but then pay for travel time.
• Another thing to look into is you probably don't need to pay for their travel time from home to the first job and then from the last job to home i.e. just for travel between jobs. If that is the case then having more part timers doing jobs bunched close together instead of a couple of full timers covering a large area could save you money. There are pros and cons to having a pool of part timers instead of a few full timers of course.
• I've been reading this thread with great interest. My Wife works as a cleaner. She travels to her work depot every morning and loads up her supplies for the day into a company vehicle. She then drives the company vehicle to various places of work to perform her duties for which she gets paid a set amount of hours per clean. She does not however get paid anything until she arrives at her first job, furthermore she does not get paid for driving the company vehicle between these jobs. Nor does she get paid for returning to the depot at night and unloading the vehicle she has been in that day. Is this legal?