Employees living far away is not something I would want to incentivize for so many reasons.

In my opinion, I don't think employees should be compensated for their commute. How an employee chooses to arrive to work and how far they live away from a company is not a responsibility of the company. Their job is to be ready to work when their shift starts.

However, this is an X-Y question. The overwhelming majority of jobs historically required you to show up to work. We didn't consider paying for their commute unless they had to travel for work outside of commuting. This was never an issue.

You asked the "X" question, but the "Y" question (the question you're probably asking) is how the burden of commuting should be handled for employees being asked to come in when they have been working remotely.

I think that there are many more nuances to this than simply compensation. If the employee has a working agreement with the company, and they have been managing their time with full-time remote hours, then they should consider that as part of the work agreement.

If they're being asked to come in (when they would normally be WFH), that's outside of the work agreement. It's basically like being asked to get coffee for your boss or something. If it was advertised as part of the job, and you accepted it, then that's fine. If you started work, and a year later, your boss asks you for daily coffee runs under the threat of being fired, that is not acceptable.

You have to keep in mind that the recent WFH popularity has challenged a lot of companies by making their own interests difficult. A lot of it is shitty stuff that the company doesn't want to say out loud, like:

• They cannot walk around and micromanage you
• They cannot watch you work
• They don't like the idea of taking breaks, even if you put in the same amount of work throughout the day
• They don't have that corporate appearance of an office of business casual-dressed employees
• They have real estate they paid for that is sitting half-empty

This kind of thing. Realistically, from an employee perspective, they're doing the same work, and they don't see any issue hanging around their house in their pajamas. From a higher-up perspective at some companies, though, they don't have the same goals.

It makes sense that a lot of employees are leaving their positions with companies forcing them to come into the office. In my opinion, they're breaking their working agreement. It may not be written down and it may not be a legal difference, but there is no doubt that they're radically changing the work requirements, which might not be what they signed up for. And what if you're in a wheelchair?

Unfortunately, if Alice and Bob live in the US, there is hardly any hope for them if the company doesn't have goodness in its heart. The workers' rights laws in the US are almost non-existent. There are even about three dozen states that can even legally fire you for being gay. It's that bad.

In my opinion, workers' rights should be highlighted, and side effects like working agreements and compensation for commuting should be solved problems by proxy.

I would make sure they are both payed well enough that they can afford to live close to the factory. If they chose to live far away anyway, that is not my problem.

I would put then on the same shift so they eat lunch together. Soon they will fall in love, get married and move in together. Problem solved.

Blowjobs
If we have to be hypothetical, let's go wild

What do you mean compensate employees for their commutes? If I were a self-respecting factory owner, I would figure out how to get the municipality to scale back any public transit options so I could lease vehicles to my employees. They should be paying me to get to work, ha!

It's none of the company's business how an employee gets to work. It's just not.

The company should compensate the employee fairly or well for the COL in the area the job is. That's it. It's not their job to worry about how the employee gets to work.

Other than allowing/encouraging WFH where it makes sense the company shouldn't try to tell the employees how to live.

Anything short of my commuting time being considered part of my working hours is a non-starter for me. I value the time I gain by not commuting a lot more than most employers do. If my day starts the moment I close my front door, then we can start talking about additional concessions.

Any compensation for commuting to your regular work place is considered taxable income.

The government allows for a tax deduction if commuting costs exceed a certain amount.

I would not do anything about it as is the custom in Sweden. If they want to change it their union can negotiate it, but they are generally more interested a bigger raise than misc benefits.

In the U.S., employers can subsidize bus passes, van pools, and bicycling to work (I guess provide bikes?) as a tax-free benefit. I'd certainly offer that.

I would not provide more $ to the employee who took a job further from home, unless I was doing on-site jobs on various job sites, work that moved around. Events, construction, etc. My employer pays for airfare or mileage for event work, that is not taxable to the employees.

Even when I did temp work I wouldn't take jobs far from my house, or any that were not one bus away, even though I have a car because cars break sometimes.

I DO think of commute time in a car as unpaid work but manage that in my life by working near home, or living near work.

Some countries actually pay your commute fees or part of them. In Argentina it's called viático. It can be advertised as part of the job payment or discussed upon closing the agreement, regardless of whether the job is legal (by the books, officially taxable) or otherwise.

My employer gives us a commuting payment based on the distance from home to work (paid per km) on days we go to the office. We get an additional €60 a month to cover our working from home costs.

No. I don’t know or care where they live. I will provide parking.

No because that opens the door for more complicated situations. Alice is late one day due to traffic or a road closure, does she get more compensation? What if Bob can't drive so his commute takes longer? What if he can drive, but chooses not to?

I wouldn't do it for time I'd do it for distance

And I'd have a cap for compensation for distance

I'd probably also offer a percentage coverage for monthly public transit passes to encourage workers to use public transit more

A high static number, like $100/week. The people who live closer will get a little extra and that's fine (a mild incentive)

First: a company should pay at a minimum a wage that can afford housing nearby (probably within 15 minutes' drive). The company should pay everyone for work hours + that round trip nearby commute time

If the company is paying that wage, then employees who live farther away are making a free choice to do so. They still get that round trip nearby commute time paid, but time beyond that is not paid. Or paid at some diminishing rate.

Companies should recognize a worker's time list for the company's benefit. But there has to be a balance because of the temptation to game the system.

I commute an hour, but I only do so because it's cheaper to live where I do instead of in the city I work in. I'm already compensated.

If I wanted a short commute I would be paying for it.

Why would an employer care how far away their employees live, or compensate them for their travel?

Unless the employer also gets to decide where they can and can't live, why should they compensate them?

The easiest two ways are to either pay per mile, or just add the round trip time to whatever their pay is. There might be some small complaints and attempts to abuse. But the complaining is easy to deal with and I think the abuse would be small and could be dealt with in similar ways as other time theft is dealt with.

If you're the owner of the factory, would you compensate them for their commutes? How would you do it?

absolutely, people's workdays should start when they begin their commute. I don't know off the top of my head, but some companies and government jobs already comp people for their travel expenses, just extend that to commutes.

Fuel card, or static rate for travel costs that actually covers the cost

Government has power to put it on trial.

1. Revitalize public transportation, adjust timetables to usual starts\ends of shifts;
2. Make dumb paycards to pay-per-ride, consequential rides counting as one (if one needs to jump them);
3. Public sector employees, essential ones first, get 2 rides per working day monthly, to go there and back;
4. After getting some stats, make it equal to N litres of gasoline in $, tax-free, promote paying with it on gas stations and for government's services. No easy conversion to cash tho, not at the start at least, so it won't be seen as free money, worthy a fraud.

As a public test, it'd show if it works. Then, it can be pushed onto students, then on other spheres.

Then, as a large amount of workers has this benefit, it's not a wet dream but a real thing to consider and demand. One that private businesses would see.

I do find that not paying for commute has a good competitive value. It means I start to earn money right from the time I clock in, not spending my first minutes to compensate getting there – and that's a bitch for low-paid workers. Compared to those working from home, I still wake up earlier and am trapped on company's ground, but it's a first step to bridge and accept this difference.

In some cities I visited (ex-socblock) some big factories provide their own transport to take workers from their district and then bring them back. Since they are based way out of cities' limits due to health concerns, it's an obvious solution to that. By managing the commute of workers, factory may also be sure everyone in production line gets there at the same time, reaching full efficiency.