Travel, Training and On-Call: What Counts as Hours Worked

These three categories generate more wage and hour errors than any other, because the rules are specific, counter-intuitive in places, and applied from memory by people who have never read them.

A product-focused treatment of annual work-hour calculations is available in learn more.

The federal definition of hours worked is set out in the hours-worked regulations in 29 CFR Part 785.

General information, not legal advice. State law frequently differs from and exceeds the federal position — California in particular. Take advice from employment counsel.

Travel time

Commuting

Ordinary travel from home to work and back at the start and end of the working day is not working time. This holds even where the employee travels to a different location than usual, provided it is still ordinary home-to-work travel.

The complication: commuting stops being ordinary when work happens during it. A non-exempt employee taking calls on the drive in is working. So is one transporting required equipment where the transport is integral to the job.

Travel during the working day

Time spent travelling as part of the day's work — between sites, to a client, on an errand — is working time and must be paid.

Where an employee is required to report to a meeting point first, travel from there to the work site is working time.

One-day trips to another city

Travel to and from another city for work in a single day is generally working time. The travel is not ordinary commuting; it is undertaken for the employer's benefit.

Time spent travelling that corresponds to the employee's ordinary commute may be deducted, and meal periods may be excluded. Beyond that, the day counts.

Overnight travel

The rule that surprises people. Travel away from home overnight is working time when it cuts across the employee's normal working hours — including on days the employee does not normally work, such as a Saturday flight during what would be their usual Monday-to-Friday hours.

Travel outside those hours as a passenger on a plane, train, bus or car is generally not working time. But any work performed during it is.

Practical consequence: an employee who normally works 9 to 5 and flies at 2pm on a Sunday is working from 2 to 5. Most employers do not pay this, and most have never considered it.

California

Materially different. Travel time under employer control is generally compensable, and the analysis focuses on control rather than on the federal categories. Employer-mandated transport is compensable. Do not apply federal travel rules to California employees.

Training time

Attendance at lectures, meetings and training programmes is working time unless all four of the following are met:

1. Attendance is outside normal working hours
2. Attendance is genuinely voluntary
3. The programme is not directly related to the employee's job
4. The employee performs no productive work during it

All four. Miss one and the time is compensable.

"Voluntary" means voluntary. Training that is nominally optional but where non-attendance carries a consequence — an effect on performance review, on advancement, on scheduling — is not voluntary.

"Not directly related to the job" is narrow. Training that helps the employee do their current job better is directly related, even if it also has wider value.

The common failure: compliance training assigned as an e-learning module, completed at home, treated as unpaid because it was "self-paced." It fails at least two of the four conditions.

Corollary for remote and asynchronous training: if a module can be completed at any time, employees will complete it at any time, including outside their shift. Either the system records that time, or the training is scheduled within working hours.

Waiting time

Engaged to wait — working time. The employee is unable to use the time effectively for their own purposes: a receptionist reading between calls, a technician waiting for a machine.

Waiting to be engaged — not working time. The employee is completely relieved of duty for a defined period long enough to use for their own purposes, and knows when they are expected back.

The distinction turns on control and on whether the period is long enough and certain enough to be genuinely free.

Short breaks. Rest periods of roughly 20 minutes or less are customarily counted as working time and must be paid. Bona fide meal periods, typically 30 minutes or more with the employee completely relieved of duty, are not.

On-call time

The most fact-dependent category, and the one where employers most often assume the answer.

On-call time is working time where the restrictions are such that the employee cannot use the time effectively for their own purposes.

Factors that push toward compensable:

• Required to remain on the employer's premises
• Required to stay within a short distance or a fixed response time
• Frequent calls
• Restrictions on activities — no alcohol, cannot leave the area, cannot arrange childcare
• Difficulty trading the on-call obligation
• A geographic restriction that materially limits ordinary life

Factors that push toward non-compensable:

• Free to be anywhere, including at home or elsewhere
• Only needs to be reachable
• Calls are infrequent
• Generous response time
• Shifts can readily be traded

Time actually spent responding to a call is working time regardless. This includes the call itself, any work performed, and travel where the employee is called in.

Remote and hybrid arrangements have blurred this. A non-exempt employee expected to monitor messages during the evening is subject to a restriction, and how much of one is a factual question worth answering deliberately rather than by default. See off-the-clock work.

Where employers most often get it wrong

Unpaid overnight travel that falls within normal working hours.

Compliance training treated as unpaid because it was self-paced.

On-call treated as never compensable because the employee was at home, without considering response time and call frequency.

Rest breaks deducted. Short breaks are paid time.

Travel between sites treated as commuting.

Applying federal rules in California — the most expensive single error in this list.

What to do

Write down your position on each category, per state, before a dispute rather than during one.

Give managers a one-page reference. Most of these errors are made by a supervisor answering a question quickly, not by payroll.

Make it recordable. If travel time or training time is compensable and your system has nowhere to put it, employees will not record it — and unrecorded compensable time is exactly the exposure described in off-the-clock work.

Check the multi-state cases specifically. An employee travelling from a state with federal rules to one without them is a question worth having answered in advance.