When does the working day actually start?

For businesses with employees working across different sites, a surprisingly common question is: When does the working day actually start? Employees may meet at a central point and travel together in a company van. A supervisor might collect colleagues on the way to site. Employees may travel directly to different locations, or someone may be responsible for dropping workers at several sites before reaching their own.

At the end of the day, the same journey happens in reverse. It can be tempting to apply a simple rule that employees are paid to work from, for example, 8am until 4.30pm, so they should be on site for those hours, and any travelling should happen before or afterwards. However, travel time is not always that straightforward.

An employee’s ordinary journey between home and their normal workplace will generally be regarded as their commute. The position can be different where travelling is actually part of what the employee is required to do for the business.

Consider a supervisor who is required to drive a company van, collect several employees, drop them at different sites and then travel to their own site. At the end of the day, they leave to collect those employees again. That is quite different from simply driving from home to work.

Equally, there can be an important difference between an employer requiring employees to meet at a particular location and travel together and employees choosing to arrange a lift between themselves. Understanding exactly what the business requires is therefore essential.

Before deciding whether employees should be travelling in their own time, establish the working arrangement in practice. Where is the employee’s normal place of work? Are they required to attend different sites? Are they instructed to meet somewhere before travelling onwards? Is company transport optional or compulsory? Is someone required to drive colleagues as part of their responsibilities? Are tools, materials or equipment being transported?

It is also worth establishing whether the arrangement has developed informally over time.

A business may discover that supervisors have been collecting employees for years without anyone ever considering what that means for working hours. Something becoming normal practice does not necessarily mean it is the correct arrangement, but you need to understand how and why it developed before changing it.

Whether travel counts as working time for the purposes of working hours and rest is not necessarily the same question as how that time should be treated for pay purposes. National Minimum Wage requirements, contractual pay arrangements and the Working Time Regulations need to be considered separately. That means blanket rules such as “travel time is unpaid” or “your working day only starts when you reach site” can be problematic.

The contract, place of work, travel requirements, pay arrangements and what the employee is actually required to do all matter. Where employees travel together, employers should also consider whether everyone in the vehicle is actually in the same position. If employees have voluntarily arranged to travel together, that may simply be their chosen method of getting to work. But if one employee is required by the business to drive the company vehicle, collect colleagues and make several drop-offs, they may be carrying out a task on behalf of the employer rather than simply commuting.

If you employ mobile or site-based workers, make sure everyone understands where the working day begins and ends. Don’t rely on arrangements that have simply evolved over time.

Establish where employees are expected to report, whether company transport is required or optional, who is responsible for driving, how travel between sites is managed and how that fits with contractual working hours.

Where the business itself requires the travel or asks an employee to transport others, the position needs more careful consideration. The important question isn’t simply whether someone is travelling. It is whether they are commuting to work or already doing something their employer requires them to do.

If you have any concerns about this subject contact us at enquiries@121hrsolutions.co.uk and we can discuss.