Bosses and workers still can’t agree on whether the commute is part of the work day, and it’s creating a $578 billion productivity problem
Bosses and workers still can’t agree on whether the commute is part of the work day, and it’s creating a $578 billion productivity problem
It's creating a $578 billion productivity problem
I used to work for a company that had the right idea. We brought our work trucks home, and our work day started when we turned the key, and ended when we got home.
Had to be at a job for 8 and it was an hour away? You were paid for that. Only had a job 5 minutes away? Enjoy the extra sleep in time and the short commute home.
Now, this is way different than an office job that is stationary, but there is definitely a conversation to be had about it. If nothing else, it may have more companies going back to taking WFH seriously again instead of needlesslt forcing people back into office spaces in order to prop up the commercial real estate sector.
Oh it’s simple. Would you be commuting if you didn’t have the job? No? Then it’s work related and should be compensated.
If you have a two hour daily commute you should be paid for those two hours. Hell the company should probably pay for the cost of commuting and a tax for offsetting the emissions.
Forcing companies to pay for commute time would also force companies to lobby for more efficient public transport and cycleways, and limit private car access to areas with regular traffic jams. In addition, there are certain job categories where driving time is limited by law: truck drivers, bus drivers, and others. However, these rules only apply when the driver is being compensated for being on the road. So, your bus driver may have driven for two hours to get to work, and now he's towards the end of his nine-hour shift, bone-tired. If the company was forced to pay him for his commute, his shift would end after seven hours, and possibly five (if he has to drive back home for another two hours). That would improve road safety. I think the two aspects - more public transport and more road safety - should be enough for everyone to support the idea of paid commute.
Return to office mandates would be a lot more palatable if we didn't have to live an hour and a half away in rush hour bumper to bumper traffic because the average person can't afford to live anywhere near the central business district anymore.
Or if we could take nonexistent public transit.
Or if we could ride a bike or walk without getting run over by a moron in their suv.
We have so many issues I don't know where to start. Personally I want to RTO. I'm sick of working from home. But with issues like that..fuck..
Lots of bickering about how it works now vs how it should work. Meanwhile I'm going crazy that nobody is pointing out how much of the burden of the commute is placed on the worker. It's literally thousands of dollars a year in being licensed to drive, vehicle registration, insurance costs, variable and ever increasing gas prices, repair and maintenance. Every single aspect of the commute is a burden on the worker, and corporations take it for granted. It's not factored into most people's pay rate or compensation. Whether or not the employer should be held responsible for relieving some of the burden, we should recognize that workers need to lessen this burden one way or another. Increasing tax deductibles to include commute time isn't an unreasonable first step. Treat it just like travel for any other work related reason.
Second: Workers aren’t grasping the managerial challenges of leading a remote workforce.
I can grasp it pretty well: Shitty managers can't tell if someone's working without watching them, so they're panicking. Managers who can measure their teams output more accurately than asses-in-chairs aren't having a problem.
As the experts have maintained for years, a flexible hybrid schedule is almost always the proper approach.
The proper approach to have people sitting in an office on a Zoom call, maybe. I've never seen hybrid be as effective as either fully remote or fully on premises.
When they forced me back into the office I didn’t ask permission, I’m just subtracting the hours I commute from my workday. Nobody I work with is in the office I go to so I just poke the mouse every 15min and tether my personal laptop to my phone for the first couple of hours while I decompress from the hour commute. Nobody ever comes by my cube, I’m just in a depressing beige box all day hating the company that’s making me be there.
I used to like my job and go out of my way to find and solve problems. Sometimes I’d work at night if there was something interesting I’d found. Now I’m never ever online after I get home and I’m doing enough to not get fired.
Although I agree with what everyone is saying "that it make sense to compensate workers for the commute in time and money", I'd like to nuance a little, because I think it is a bit more complicated from a moral standpoint: Imagine employer were paying for your commute and you were on the clock during it, what happen when you move to another appartment/house further from work ? Should the employer continue to pay and clock your longer commute ? It seems weird that my decision to move to another part of the city would affect my employer. The consequence would be that employer will mandate that you cannot move without their appoval or that their cost for your commute is fixed in the contract and need to be renegociable. In the end what it boils down to is not that commute should be paid for and part of the work day. What people want is better salaries and smaller hours. Then the commute doesn't matter anymore, and stays at the expense of the worker who can therefore move wherever they want.
The only reason I own a car is to get to work. Otherwise I’d use public transport and delivery services all the time.
Therefore, 90% of the time I use my car is in service of my job. Getting to the office and coming home from the office. Therefore my commute is entirely based on the fact that I’m going to or from work. Otherwise I wouldn’t be using the car, sitting in traffic.
So yeah, it’s 100% ‘on the clock’ time, even if they want to somehow argue it isn’t. Even if I wanted a car for things like grocery shopping or getting elsewhere in the city, the time spent in traffic going to or from work, and the wear and tear on the vehicle during that time is because of my job. Therefore my job should pay for my time and the vehicle maintenance. Period.
Allow WFH and pay us if you want us to come in.
Also, I remember paying for travel time when we needed a technician to come to our house and service something. So there is already precedent that traveling for work counts as work in itself. Hopefully that actually went to the tech and not their boss.
If I didn't choose to do it, its part of the work day.
When I did WFH my boss insisted that because I didn't have to commute I should have all my tools up before my shift even starts.
I didn't last very long.
This same company got sued up the ass when we were in office for trying to say we needed to have all our tools up before clocking in. But somehow WFH made it ok.
Sounds like it could be a potential $578 billion wage theft problem.
(I know, it's neither really)
In the UK it's pretty clearly spelled out (although not always perfectly applied, I'm sure there's still the odd boss trying it on).
Your working day starts when you arrive at your contracted place of work, and are ready to start work. Not when you walk in the door, before having a cuppa or breakfast in the office kitchen. Not after your computer has booted up and is ready for you.
If you have multiple places of work, or are travelling away from your contracted place of work, then your working day starts the moment you walk out your door and leave home.
The end of the day is the same, if you're in the office it ends and then you leave, if you're working away it ends when you get home (so factor in travel time and leave site before then).
Whether or not you actually get paid for every hour is another matter, however. Salary vs hourly work. If you're salaried it's supposed to be give and take - however it's ultimately up to you to take what you can to balance it out. Work isn't going to offer you an early finish, not as easily as they'll ask you to stay late.
Workers aren’t grasping the managerial challenges of leading a remote workforce.
Cry me a fucking river
Each year, the average American spends nearly $8,500 and 239 hours traveling to and from work, per data from Clever Real Estate.
One could argue that's "good" because it makes the wheel of economy turn. Gas pollution alone would make me say this is bad for all involved (except oil companies and their shareholders, but they can go fuck themselves)
Still, though, WFH Research also finds that fully remote work is associated with 10% to 20% lower productivity than fully in-person work [<- link to the research paper, go to page 10]. Barrero explained the disparity to Fortune in July: “In many of the studies we cite and in some of our own survey evidence, workers often get more done when remote simply because they save time from the daily commute and from other office distractions. This can make them look more productive on a ‘per day’ basis, even if it means they’re actually less productive on a ‘per hour’ basis.”
There's no reason to "go above and beyond" when you're in the comfort of your home. It's why perceived "per hour" productivity drops. Besides, nobody actually works 8 hours straight, there are several pauses, even in an office or factory. We're not robots.
When that commute is eliminated, they view it as a productivity increase. Employers, naturally, instead see it as less bang for their buck.
"You'll waste precious hours of your day and you WILL LIKE IT, WAGESLAVE!"
Challenges in communicating remotely and lack of motivation are the main issues preventing fully remote workers from being more productive
Good luck motivating me to waste 2h every day without any raise or compensation in order to be "more productive in the office"
If you need to do something for work that you would not otherwise do it's part of the job and should be compensated. At least that has been my attitude with any company trips or events and going to the office.
On the one hand, as a worker, I absolutely think it should be considered part of the work day, HOWEVER, there's so many factors that go into what constitutes your commute, that I'm not sure how businesses would account for that. Is it based on distance, so the farther away you live, the more compensation you get, just because you live further away? That seems to unfairly reward people people who live farther away. Do you just give a blanket extra 1 hr (30 min before/after the work day) to everyone to account for it, assuming that that covers most cases?
It does seem to be a standard for most businesses that travel, you're paying for their time just to come out. I've had plenty of plumbers/handymen/house fixerish people who have charged just for gracing me with their presence for <10 min, even though they didn't actually do any work, there's usually a ~$50–100 minimum charge for house calls. I'm assuming their travel time is getting factored into it, so why shouldn't other workers travel time be factored in as well?
Commute is part of the work day, but unpaid. In fact, avoiding commutes in big cities are one of the main advantages of remote work. In some cases, it is nearly, or even more, two hours back and forth an office or a plant. If people could go to the irs jobs just with a 15-20 minutes walk, it would be a very different issue, but mainly is an hour of traffice jams or packed metros and buses.
If commute should was part of the daily hours, we would see employers preoccupied because there would be people working 6 hours or less in the office or the plant, so they would ask for better transit systems and more affordable housing that implied nota having to go to live 40-50 km away because prices are unpayable nearer. Many of them would allow remote work more easily.
It's crystal clear that commuting is not part of the work day, but perhaps it should be.
Just like we should only work 6 hours so we can actually have some time after to do things we want, like hobbies or just enjoying time with friends.
Work is consuming people's lives and entire identities.
This is why I refuse hybrid or on location working as an office worker: I'm not getting paid for the commute. Fuck that. (Of course, it's also a waste of time to be in the office as it's impossible to concentrate, when you have some sales people loudly talking into their phones right opposite you as you're trying to get some though work done)
I use my drive as part of my work hours.