Do I pay for travel time?

Wywth

cobbingstones wrote: »

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 (£8 per hour for the cleaners and £9 for the supervisor). Who is right?

Thanks you

cobbingstones wrote: »

This person wants their full hourly rate for travel. They feel they are working so why shouldn't they get their full rate? I would of been prepared to pay around the £4.50 per hour mark, although I do not get any money for this time. Even without travel time I am paying the £2 extra per hour if I include products, materials, holiday pay, mileage, employers NI etc. With travel time on top, it would not be viable to run a business on their current hourly rate.

Thank you Sue.

Who runs your business, you or your employee?

Get a grip and point them in the direction of their contract of employment with you.
(Ensure, of course, you are acting in accordance with it )

Savvy_Sue

cobbingstones wrote: »

This person wants their full hourly rate for travel. They feel they are working so why shouldn't they get their full rate? I would of been prepared to pay around the £4.50 per hour mark, although I do not get any money for this time. Even without travel time I am paying the £2 extra per hour if I include products, materials, holiday pay, mileage, employers NI etc. With travel time on top, it would not be viable to run a business on their current hourly rate.

I don't think you can pay an hourly minimum rate below NMW, even if it's for travel time. What you'd therefore need to do would be to lower their hourly rate, but pay it for more hours. And the costs might depend on whether you're paying regular hours, or have people on zero hours contracts, and whether or not you can 'bunch' jobs easily.

anamenottaken wrote: »

Products and materials have nothing to do with an hourly rate you are paying your workers. Those are not costs of employing them though they may be costs of providing the service.

True.

Wywth wrote: »

Who runs your business, you or your employee?

Get a grip and point them in the direction of their contract of employment with you.
(Ensure, of course, you are acting in accordance with it )

And that the contract complies with the legal minimum framework.

Savvy_Sue

antrobus wrote: »

Someone else asked a similar question on another thread recently, to which I provided the following response;

I saw that when you first posted it, interesting! It will be even more interesting to see how it works out with some of the companies which currently only pay NMW and don't pay for travel time ...

antrobus wrote: »

I'd therefore guess that, if an employer was paying "well over the minimum wage" but not paying for travel time, they would still have a calculation to make to ensire they were complying with the NMW.

Indeed.

vintagebrighton

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

paulwf

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.

paulwf

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.

ohreally

paulwf wrote: »

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.

That falls apart when the employees report into the office at the start of their shift!

liam4906

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?

dacouch

liam4906 wrote: »

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?

Is she on or near the minimum wage?

paddyrg

liam4906 wrote: »

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?

Maybe, maybe not. Depends what she gets paid overall to cover the day from arrival at the depot until leaving it. If, for instance, she gets £15 per visit (before tax and NI) for 5 visits of an hour each, with an hour's driving in between, then that's £75 over 9 hours (5 on the job and 4 travel). 75/9 is £8.33/hour, well above minimum wage, so legit. If she's getting £10/visit in the same circumstances then £5.56/hour is going to be below NMW so not legit.