The working time of such an employee begins at the time of departing home and ends when he or she returns home after completing that work when an employee does not have a fixed or ordinary place of work and the employer has not set up any other venue which it could treat as the company’s offsite headquarters or branch location.

This method of calculating working time is triggered by the nature of a job involving the performance of certain tasks every day in different facilities situated in different towns and cities. Employees not only travel every day from their place of residence to a given location and back but also are mobile during the course of doing their jobs as they move between towns and cities.

In a case recently adjudicated by the Supreme Court (judgment of 24 February 2021, III PSKP 4/21) the Supreme Court once again found that during such travel an employee is at an employer’s disposal, and that doing this job also involves traveling without which it would not be possible to perform the fundamental employee tasks. For that reason, the means of transport employees use (their own car, a car provided by an employer or public means of transport) is of no consequence. Nor is what employees do during their travel of consequence (whether employees drive their car on their own, whether they do the work that can be done during their travel time or whether they are resting).

In addition, traveling in a given area as part of doing their job in a defined geographical area cannot be deemed to be business travel or a business trip. This travel is not of a sporadic nature but by its very nature it is part and parcel to the scope of a mobile employee’s business duties.
 

Find more in the PRO HR April 2021.