Paying for workday travel for nonexempt employees

Employers aren’t required to pay nonexempt employees for the time they spend commuting between their home and work to begin their workday or after ending their workday. Travel time during the workday is often compensable, however, and should be recorded and counted as hours worked for potential overtime. A home health agency recently learned this the hard way.

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 nonexempt 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 didn’t record the aides’ travel time, nor did it 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