Suppose there are two employees: Alice and Bob, who do the same job at the same factory. Alice has a 10 minute (20RT) commute, Bob commutes 35 minutes(70RT).
If you’re the owner of the factory, would you compensate them for their commutes? How would you do it?
Employees living far away is not something I would want to incentivize for so many reasons.
But that’s not what compensation for the commute would incentivize. I don’t understand why people think getting paid to drive to work would mean employees would spend most of the week driving. It would mean employers would only hire employees who live upstairs.
Paying money for a behavior is an incentive for that behavior.
Does that mean every employee would choose to live far away to maximize their commuter mileage benefit? No.
Does that mean some barriers to living far away would be reduced, thus increasing odds that some employees would live further away, or that some prospective employees that live at distance would consider applying to this company over a company that doesn’t offer a commuter mileage benefit? Yes.
Companies also aren’t worried employees “would spend most of their weeks driving”. Most companies don’t include drive time as hours worked.
In my opinion, I don’t think employees should be compensated for their commute. How an employee chooses to arrive to work and how far they live away from a company is not a responsibility of the company. Their job is to be ready to work when their shift starts.
However, this is an X-Y question. The overwhelming majority of jobs historically required you to show up to work. We didn’t consider paying for their commute unless they had to travel for work outside of commuting. This was never an issue.
You asked the “X” question, but the “Y” question (the question you’re probably asking) is how the burden of commuting should be handled for employees being asked to come in when they have been working remotely.
I think that there are many more nuances to this than simply compensation. If the employee has a working agreement with the company, and they have been managing their time with full-time remote hours, then they should consider that as part of the work agreement.
If they’re being asked to come in (when they would normally be WFH), that’s outside of the work agreement. It’s basically like being asked to get coffee for your boss or something. If it was advertised as part of the job, and you accepted it, then that’s fine. If you started work, and a year later, your boss asks you for daily coffee runs under the threat of being fired, that is not acceptable.
You have to keep in mind that the recent WFH popularity has challenged a lot of companies by making their own interests difficult. A lot of it is shitty stuff that the company doesn’t want to say out loud, like:
- They cannot walk around and micromanage you
- They cannot watch you work
- They don’t like the idea of taking breaks, even if you put in the same amount of work throughout the day
- They don’t have that corporate appearance of an office of business casual-dressed employees
- They have real estate they paid for that is sitting half-empty
This kind of thing. Realistically, from an employee perspective, they’re doing the same work, and they don’t see any issue hanging around their house in their pajamas. From a higher-up perspective at some companies, though, they don’t have the same goals.
It makes sense that a lot of employees are leaving their positions with companies forcing them to come into the office. In my opinion, they’re breaking their working agreement. It may not be written down and it may not be a legal difference, but there is no doubt that they’re radically changing the work requirements, which might not be what they signed up for. And what if you’re in a wheelchair?
Unfortunately, if Alice and Bob live in the US, there is hardly any hope for them if the company doesn’t have goodness in its heart. The workers’ rights laws in the US are almost non-existent. There are even about three dozen states that can even legally fire you for being gay. It’s that bad.
In my opinion, workers’ rights should be highlighted, and side effects like working agreements and compensation for commuting should be solved problems by proxy.
I believe my company’s arrangements are agreeable for remote workers.
For those who are classified as fully remote, they can claim travel expenses on mileage up to a certain range. Basically, the radius of the city that their “core” office is based out of plus the surrounding towns. But they can’t claim more than that (unless they’re out of state and they’ll pay for like plane tickets and whatnot).
For those who are hybrid (expected to show up at least once a week) and fully onsite, they don’t get any mileage for travel to their home office but do get mileage to satellite offices, calculated by distance from the home office.
The compensation is also very generous. While I am hybrid, I have one day per week at my home office and one day per week at another, and that is more than enough to pay for my gas (even factoring in non-work related travel, which I admittedly don’t do much of).
But there are definitely some people who are able to benefit from this more than others. If you live a 5-minute drive away from the furthest office from your home office (would that I could be so lucky), you get to claim a lot of travel reimbursement with minimal actual travel, which seems unfair for those who are routinely asked to commute even further than their norm.
Yeah why not. That shit is normal in my country. People get paid per kilometer or they get a transit pass. Of course the amount is capped and it’s a tax write off for the company anyway. Not sure why some of the comments here are against it. I guess they are all Americans
Pretty normal here in the San Francisco / Silicon Valley area. Although it usually comes in the form of chartered busses, transit passes or free parking. And parking in San Francisco can be like $400 a month, so free parking is nice.
The commute in this area averages 1-2 hours one way for many. So transportation perks are important to retaining high value employees.
And because the commute sucks, remote / hybrid work options are also key for many gigs.
Not the person you’re replying to but in the Netherlands it’s just a standard amount per KM from home to work with no compensation for travel time.
It sounds like an incentive not to hire people who live too far away from the office to me.
I would make sure they are both payed well enough that they can afford to live close to the factory. If they chose to live far away anyway, that is not my problem.
I would put then on the same shift so they eat lunch together. Soon they will fall in love, get married and move in together. Problem solved.
