Remote workers and FLSA travel pay

Can employers make remote workers record or get paid for travel between home and work under the FLSA

No. Ordinary travel from home to work is not hours worked under the FLSA, even when the employee works at home part of the week, splits the day between home and office, or returns home after a remote block of work. The part people miss is that commute status turns on what the travel is, not on how modern the work arrangement looks.

The core rule is simple. An employee who travels from home before the regular workday and returns home at the end of the workday is doing ordinary home-to-work travel, and that travel is not worktime. The rule applies whether the employee works at a fixed location or at different job sites, so remote work does not turn a normal commute into paid time.

The Department of Labor has also said that a remote-worker schedule does not change that result when the travel is ordinary commuting. In Opinion Letter FLSA2020-19, the Wage and Hour Division concluded that travel between home and office was not compensable for an employee who teleworked part of the day and worked at the office part of the day, so long as the travel was ordinary commuting and the employee did not work during it.

The inconvenient part is that employers can still require the travel to be recorded, even when they do not have to pay for it. Payroll systems often track both recorded time and paid time. For FLSA purposes, the employer may exclude ordinary commuting from paid hours, but it should keep accurate records of any time that crosses into compensable work.

Travel becomes paid time when it is part of the day’s work. That includes travel from one worksite to another during the workday, travel after the employee has already started the principal activity of the day, and travel that includes actual work. If the employee answers emails, takes calls, carries out assigned tasks, or is otherwise working while commuting, that time is no longer an ordinary commute.

The regulation that controls this distinction says that travel from job site to job site during the workday must be counted as hours worked. The same regulation says travel from home to work before the workday begins, and from work to home at the end of the day, is ordinary home-to-work travel and is not hours worked. A remote worker who leaves home, works at the office, then goes home is still in the commute category if the trip is just a commute.

A practical example makes the line clearer. If an employee works from home in the morning, drives to the office for an afternoon meeting, then drives back home with no work during the drive, the two drives are ordinary commute segments. If that same employee is told to stop at a client site between home and office and make a presentation there, the detour after the first work task can become paid travel because it is tied to the day’s work.

Employers also cannot convert ordinary commuting into paid time just by saying they will reimburse it. The Portal-to-Portal Act and the Department of Labor’s regulations keep ordinary home-to-work travel outside hours worked unless another rule makes it compensable. Payment policy, mileage reimbursement, and FLSA hours worked are related but not the same question.

For remote workers, the hardest issue is usually the first principal activity of the day. If an employee starts work at home, then later drives to the office, the commute after the home work block is not automatically paid simply because the employee already opened a laptop earlier. The Department of Labor has said the travel in that kind of split-day arrangement was not compensable when the employee had a real off-duty gap and did not work during the travel.

An employer should pay for the trip when the employee is not really commuting anymore and is instead traveling as part of the job. That happens with mid-day travel between two worksites, travel to a meeting place to receive instructions or pick up tools, or travel that cuts across the workday. It also happens when the employee is working through the trip, because actual work during travel is work time.

If the employer wants remote workers to record travel time, the employer should separate three buckets in the timekeeping rule: ordinary commute time, paid workday travel, and any work performed during travel. That lets the payroll team mark the commute as unpaid while still capturing the travel that must be paid under the FLSA. The DevConnect platform uses the same general principle for its own tracker, and you can see the project here: https://devconnectplatform.com.

State law can add more protection than the federal rule. The FLSA sets the floor, not the ceiling. If a state wage law, an employment contract, or a company policy gives broader pay for commute-related travel, the employer has to follow that stronger rule. The federal rule alone does not force payment for a normal home-to-work trip.

The safest practical standard is this: pay for travel that is part of the job, do not pay for a normal commute, and never ignore work performed during the trip. Remote work changes where the day starts, but it does not erase the ordinary commute rule.