Money Moral Dilemma: Should I pass train compensation on to my employer?

Pollycat

mouse118 wrote: »

Of course you should give the compensation to your employer. He paid out the money, not giving HIS money back to him is THEFT!!

Maybe the next MMD will be 'I kept the compensation for my delayed train tickets paid for by my employer and I've been dismissed. What should I do?' :whistle:

TBagpuss

It depends. Is it your time which is wasted by the delay, or your employers time? If it is their time, so the are paying you for the period when you are delayed, then they are the ones losing out and you should, as a minimum, offer them the money.

If it is your own time then it is more reasonable for you to keep it, but either way, the appropriate thing to do is ask and then follow the policy you are given.

AngryAberdonian

It's earning extra money from an already rich corporation. If I am made to commute 17000 hours a day and still get delays on those lines I deserve to be compensated for that. Your employer will expect you to make up for any time you missed because of these delays and so the delay is not impacting them at all. It is, however impacting the employee a great deal. And if you refund the money to the company then they are actually stealing from yourself. And I think you'll find that corporate theft is a much bigger crime than petty theft..

debbiesmum

I used to work for an international company and our view within Personnel was that although the employer paid for the tickets, the employEE was the person suffering the delays, therefore the employEE shoud retain the compensation.

Having said that, I took early retirement 12 years ago and I am horrified by the actions of some employERS now, so advice would be to check with your manager.

Pollycat

debbiesmum wrote: »

I used to work for an international company and our view within Personnel was that although the employer paid for the tickets, the employEE was the person suffering the delays, therefore the employEE shoud retain the compensation.

Having said that, I took early retirement 12 years ago and I am horrified by the actions of some employERS now, so advice would be to check with your manager.

Mmmmm.
Isn't that a much more sensible suggestion than asking a bunch of random strangers on t'internet.

wolvoman

There's 2 factors to consider here:

1. Was it a refund or was it compensation? If it's a refund then it's due to the person who paid for the ticket. If it's compensation then it's for the person who travelled on the ticket.

2. What mechanism does a company/employer have for processing the compensation if you did pay it to them?
Would you hand them some cash? How would they account for this? Is it revenue? Does it go on the bottom line? Against travel budget? How would you physically pay it to them>
Would you ask for a corresponding cut in pay? In which case, what about tax/NI?

The same applies to EU261 compensation for flight delays too, not just train delay repay.

Stoke

Would probably depend if I was still getting paid travel time. If I'm travelling from Leeds to Stoke, my time is essentially covered until the end of the working day or my journey is complete. If there is a delay, then I would be on the train long after I have stopped being paid.

crmism

If your employer is covering the costs of your travel, it's quite possible that he's treating you as being on business even though you aren't at your place of work.

Arriving late is costing him money, so you should mention the situation and see what he says, even though the compensation is payable to you. If he decides you should keep it, it won't be taxable as far as I know, but how he would treat it if he thinks he should have it is another matter. Either way, he will think the more of you for volunteering the information.

NBLondon

Sharon87 wrote: »

I would ask your employer. Some companies won’t actually have a way to process compensation. If it’s a refund it’ll go back to the card it was paid with, if it was the same company that refunded. But delay repay is different.

Is the sensible answer.... If it's a big enough organisation to have a travel policy, they may well already have an answer to the question. If it's a small organisation - you might end up writing it.

dammitjanet wrote: »

This happens quite a lot in the company I work for and our policy is that any compensation is allowed to go to the person who has incurred the delay as it's your time. As someone above stated, there isn't even a way to pay the money back because the tickets are paid from a corporate account - the payment is compensation, not a refund.

Yep - that's my current situation. Corporate Travel Agent has no practical way to take it back.

wolvoman wrote: »

There's 2 factors to consider here:

1. Was it a refund or was it compensation? If it's a refund then it's due to the person who paid for the ticket. If it's compensation then it's for the person who travelled on the ticket.

When I used to work for a small not for profit and bought the tickets myself and claimed back - I did hit this situation and was told to keep it. The work hadn't been delayed (because of connection times and allowing leeway I still made it to the work destination on time despite being 31 minutes late into destination station) so the compensation was for my stress

archie1411

Do you still get paid, even if you are late? If yes, give the money to your employer (or, at the very least, offer it - you never know, your employer may let you keep it but will at least appreciate your offer) if no, keep it for yourself for what it is - compensation