Human Resource Blog

Travel time pay

I need clarification on travel time for employees to ensure that we are paying staff for their time appropriately.
We are in North Carolina and we have two staff that work part of their day in the office and part of their day in the community providing therapy services to consumers.
We currently pay them an hourly rate for the specific therapy service that they provide with the consumers/patients but another administrative rate for their travel time between consumers.
From my understanding we should also be paying them this travel time if they are leaving the office (after providing adminstrative support) going to the consumers home and then also paying them to return to the office to work as long as they are not taking a lunch break or running personal errands during this travel time.
Can you clarify as to whether I am doing this correctly? One of the supervisors thought that we should only be paying for travel time between consumers but not to and from the office.
Thank you for your help.

You are correct and the supervisor is wrong, assuming your hourly employees are covered by the federal minimum wage law. Under the federal FLSA or Fair Labor Standards Act, the employee need not be paid for travel to and from her home. But the employee must be paid for travel between worksites during the day. If you require the employee to report to the office, it is the first and last worksite of the day. 

Suppose employee Anita reports to the office in the morning, then travels to the homes of clients A,B and C, and returns to the office before going home for the day. Anita must be paid for traveling from the office to client A, from there to client B, from there to client C and back to the office. (This is true whether Anita is driving or a passenger in a car or truck.)

Even if the employee does not perform therapy at the office, if she is required to report there, it is a worksite.

In fact, you may not be paying the employees for enough travel time. If Anita leaves client B and stops for lunch on her way to client C, you do not need to pay her for the time she spends eating lunch. But she is still entitled to payment for the time to drive from client B to client C. (Even of she drives 15 minutes out of her way for lunch, she is still entitled to payment for the portion of the time she would spend driving straight from one client to the next. Suppose it takes 30 minutes to drive from client B to client C. She drives for an hour with lunch. You must pay her for 30 mintues of that drive time.)

If Anita drives from client C directly home, usually you would not have to pay her for that drive. However, if she must return to the office, she has to be paid for the drive time from client C to the office.  

Also be aware that if the employee works more than 40 hours per week total (drive time plus administrative time plus therapy time) then she must be paid overtime based on her average hourly rate. (However, if these workers are employed by the state of North Carolina, different rules may apply.)