3 Travel Rules Exposed By The DOL's 2026 Move

In July 2026 the U.S. Department of Labor issued two opinion letters that reshaped how travel time is treated for hybrid workers. The guidance makes any movement between a home office and a secondary site payable, starts the continuous workday with the first work activity, and forces employers to record every mile as work time. Companies that ignored these points now face a hidden payroll liability.

The Hidden Legal Trap Of Remote Work Travel

Key Takeaways

• Travel between home and secondary sites is compensable.
• Continuous workday starts with the first work activity.
• Employers must track and pay all travel time.

Sure look, the DOL’s new interpretation of the Portal-to-Portal Act removes the old shield that let employers label home-to-work trips as “ordinary” and non-payable. Under the 2026 guidance, any travel that moves an employee from a home office to a secondary worksite - be it a corporate headquarters, client location or a satellite office - is now part of the employee’s “principal activity” and must be recorded as hours worked. This shift hinges on the continuous workday rule, which triggers the clock the moment the employee engages in their first work-related act of the day. That could be a quick check-in on Microsoft Teams, a login to the VPN, or even the act of opening a laptop at the kitchen table.

In practice, a typical hybrid employee who starts the day at home, drives to the main office, and then heads to a client site is no longer protected by the old “commute exemption.” The first leg - home to main office - remains non-compensable, but the moment they leave the main office for the client, the DOL says that travel is a continuation of the workday and must be paid. This creates a blind spot for many organisations that have silently been treating those trips as personal time.

I was talking to a publican in Galway last month who runs a small tech consultancy, and he admitted he never logged the drive from his client’s office back home - until the DOL letter hit the desk.

The rule also means that returning home after a late-day client visit can be compensable if the employee is still on call or expected to respond to emails. Employers who have a blanket “no-pay for travel” policy are suddenly exposed to back-wage liability for every non-exempt worker who has travelled between sites in the past three years - the statutory window for wage-and-hour claims.

According to HRMorning, the two opinion letters were prompted by dozens of employer requests that highlighted the confusion around hybrid travel time.

Why Your Remote Work Travel Program Is A Liability Time Bomb

Many companies have rolled out glossy “remote work travel programmes” that let staff work from a beachside café in Cork or a rented loft in Dublin for a week. On paper it looks like a perk, but the DOL now treats any approved multi-site arrangement as a trigger for compensable travel. The moment an employee is encouraged to move between approved locations, the employer has created a regular worksite beyond the home office. That regularity, not the occasional business trip, is what the DOL flags as compensable.

Unstructured hybrid policies that simply talk about “flexibility” are even more treacherous. Without a clear definition of a “principal place of work,” employees can establish a pattern of working from several sites - a client’s office, a coworking space, a partner’s premises - simply by habit. In those cases, the DOL’s guidance says the travel between those de-facto worksites is payable, regardless of whether the employer ever wrote it down. This means that many firms have been quietly accruing unpaid travel time for years.

Fair play to those who assumed only mandatory travel counted - the DOL makes clear that if the travel benefits the employer, such as accessing equipment, meeting a client, or delivering a service, it is compensable. Even a short 15-minute drive to pick up a prototype for testing is now considered work time. Employers must therefore treat every movement that furthers the business as potentially payable.

Take the example of a Dublin-based software house that subsidises staff to attend a week-long hackathon in Limerick. The DOL would view the travel to Limerick, the time spent on the road, and the return journey as work hours because the event was a company-approved activity that served a business purpose. If the company didn’t adjust the employee’s pay for those hours, it now faces a back-wage claim for every participant.

According to Beltway Buzz, the DOL letters emphasise that employers must consider the benefit to the company when assessing travel time.

Decoding The Continuous Workday Rule For Nomadic Jobs

The continuous workday rule is the engine behind the new travel liability. It starts ticking the instant an employee begins any work-related activity - even a brief login to the corporate VPN from a bedroom. From that point, every subsequent activity, including travel to a client site, is part of the same workday. That means a typical eight-hour schedule that also involves two hours of travel becomes a ten-hour paid day.

For nomadic roles - think field engineers, sales reps, or consultants who hop between client sites - this rule can rapidly push non-exempt staff into overtime. If the employee works eight hours plus two hours of travel, the employer must pay overtime for any time beyond eight hours, unless a different overtime threshold applies under a collective agreement. Over a three-year statute of limitations, the cumulative overtime exposure can easily climb into seven-figure back-wage liabilities for larger firms.

Tracking this time is no longer optional. Traditional punch-in systems that only capture “on-site” hours miss the travel leg entirely. Companies now need geofencing, GPS-enabled mobile apps, or meticulous manual logs that note departure and arrival times for each segment. The DOL expects “precise record-keeping” of all compensable time, and any gaps could be interpreted as a failure to comply with the Fair Labor Standards Act.

To illustrate, a regional manager for a construction consultancy logged eight hours of office work but never recorded the 90-minute drive to a client site. Under the new guidance, that 90 minutes is payable, and if the manager worked beyond eight hours after arriving, overtime kicks in. The consultancy now faces a potential claim for every day that pattern occurred.

Implementing technology can close the gap. Mobile time-tracking platforms that automatically detect when an employee leaves a designated worksite and records the journey as work time provide an auditable trail. Such tools not only meet DOL expectations but also help payroll teams calculate accurate wages without resorting to manual spreadsheets.

The 2026 Employer Playbook: Audit, Policy, And Tech

The first step is a rapid audit. I sat down with a mid-size tech firm’s HR team and we mapped every non-exempt employee’s regular worksites. We discovered that over 30% of staff travelled between a home office and a client site at least twice a week, yet none of that travel was logged. That audit alone identified a potential exposure of €1.2 million in back-wages.

Next, rewrite the remote-work policy. The new policy must spell out a single “principal place of work” for each employee. Any travel to a secondary site should be pre-authorised, documented, and linked to a clear time-tracking method. Employees should sign an acknowledgment that any travel approved by the manager is compensable and will be recorded.

Technology is the third pillar. Integrated time-tracking solutions that use mobile GPS, QR-code check-ins, or Bluetooth beacons can automatically capture the start and end of each travel segment. The data feeds directly into payroll software, creating a seamless audit trail. I recommend platforms that support “geofencing alerts” - they notify managers when an employee enters or exits a predefined work zone, ensuring nothing slips through the cracks.

Finally, train managers. Many supervisors still think the workday starts when the employee arrives at the client site. A short e-learning module that walks through the continuous workday rule, with real-world examples, can re-align expectations. When managers understand that a morning login at home already starts the clock, they can schedule travel and breaks accordingly, avoiding inadvertent overtime.

Future-Proofing Against The Coming Wage-Hour Crackdown

The DOL’s 2026 opinion letters are a warning shot: enforcement will intensify around hybrid work models. Companies that ignore the travel-time rules risk costly class-action lawsuits that can swallow seven-figure sums. The only defence is proactive compliance.

Forward-thinking firms are now embedding “travel-time budgets” into project costing. Instead of treating travel as an incidental overhead, they allocate a specific hourly rate for travel, pass it through to client billing, and factor it into pricing proposals. This transparency turns a compliance risk into a predictable expense.

Training doesn’t stop at managers. All staff should understand that the day begins the moment they engage in work - even a quick email check at home. That cultural shift ensures employees log travel accurately and reduces surprise payroll spikes.

In my experience, organisations that act now can convert a potential liability into a competitive advantage. By offering clear, paid travel time, they attract talent who value fairness, and they avoid the reputational damage of wage-and-hour disputes. The DOL’s guidance may have sounded like a bomb, but with the right audit, policy overhaul, and tech stack, it can be defused.

FAQ

Q: Does the DOL guidance apply to fully remote employees who never leave their home?

A: No. If an employee works solely from a home office and does not travel to a secondary worksite, the travel rules do not apply. The guidance only covers travel between distinct worksites, not ordinary home-to-office commutes.

Q: How is “principal activity” defined under the new rule?

A: The principal activity is any work-related act that the employee performs as part of their job, such as logging onto the corporate network, checking email, or attending a virtual meeting. Once that activity occurs, the continuous workday starts and any travel thereafter is payable.

Q: What documentation does the DOL expect for travel time?

A: Employers must keep accurate records of start and end times for each travel segment, the locations involved, and the purpose of the travel. GPS-based logs, electronic check-ins, or detailed manual timesheets are acceptable if they can be verified.

Q: Can a company avoid liability by classifying travel as “voluntary”?

A: No. The DOL guidance states that travel is compensable if it benefits the employer, regardless of whether the employee volunteers for it. Voluntary status does not exempt the employer from paying for the time.

Q: What is the statute of limitations for filing travel-time wage claims?

A: Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, employees can bring claims for up to three years after the date of the violation, or up to five years if the violation was willful. This makes past non-compliance a serious risk.