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Is Travel Time During the Workday Paid?
Editor's Note
Is Travel Time During the Workday Paid?
Yes. When the employee is nonexempt and their work involves traveling to different sites, their travel time is paid.
It makes sense when you say it that way. But travel time can be confusing because traveling from home to work at the beginning of the workday and travelling from work to home at the end of the workday is not paid.
I can see someone thinking if travel to and from work is not paid, then traveling to and from work during the workday is not paid. The logic is sound. But this is wage and hour law.
For me, it's easier to look at where you started and where you are going. If you are going from work site to work site, it's paid. If you are going to or from home (or not work site), it's generally not paid.
Wen employees are on the road, different rules can apply depending again on whether or not they're exempt, what they're doing, and what state wage and hour laws apply.
Figuring out pay and travel time is a trip.
- Heather Bussing
Employers are not required to pay non-exempt employees for the time they spend commuting between their home and work to begin their workday or after ending their workday. However, travel time during the workday is often compensable and should be recorded and counted as hours worked for potential overtime. A home health agency recently learned this the hard way.
The home health aides
Prestige Home Care Agency, a home healthcare service operated by Nursing Home Care Management, Inc., employed aides who provided in-home healthcare services to its clients. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the aides were considered non-exempt employees who were entitled to overtime for any hours worked in excess of 40 during a workweek. In the course of a workday, aides often served multiple clients, which required them to travel from one client’s home to another to provide care. Prestige did not record the aides’ travel time, nor did they treat the time spent traveling between clients’ homes as compensable hours worked. After a wide-ranging investigation, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) sued Prestige over its recordkeeping and compensation practices for workday travel.
Workday travel and the FLSA
The DOL did not contend Prestige’s aides should be paid for any travel time before or after an aide started providing home healthcare for the day, but it did seek compensation for the time aides traveled “between the start of the first client’s appointment and the end of the last client’s appointment.” According to a federal appeals court, the DOL was right.
As a general rule, an employee is on duty and entitled to compensation so long as they are unable to use the time for their own purposes. The FLSA requires compensation for work-related travel during an individual’s workday. Travel time that is necessary for an employee to go between job sites or assignments during a workday is compensable under the FLSA, meaning that the travel time must be recorded as hours worked. Under the circumstances, the appeals court had no problem finding Prestige should be recording the time its aides traveled between clients’ homes during their workdays and compensating them for that time.
Check yourself
Home healthcare agencies are not the only businesses whose employees travel between sites during the workday. While employers are not required to pay non-exempt employees for normal commuting time before and after the workday ends, they must accurately record any time employees spend travelling between assigned duties during the workday and then pay them accordingly for that time. Avoid the nasty surprise Prestige received from the DOL.
- Dept. of Labor v. Nursing Home Care Management, Inc., 23-2284 (3rd Cir. 1/31/25)
