Requirement to travel clause

If you need your employee to travel as part of their job, for example to attend meetings with customers etc., it’s better to include a specific “requirement to travel” clause. That way, there’s no misunderstanding about what you require of the employee in terms of leaving the office to fulfill their job duties.

Home and abroad

You probably have some employees who never leave their workplace. Conversely, you may have others whom you require to attend meetings, visit clients, customers or suppliers or visit your other offices. This is not the same as a mobility clause because that envisages relocating the employee on a temporary or permanent basis to an alternative workplace. A Requirement to Travel Clause is intended to cover those ad hoc situations where you need the employee to leave the office, usually for no more than a day or so. It might be implied as part of their list of job duties that an employee will travel in order to carry out those duties effectively, but it’s much better to have an express clause for the avoidance of doubt. It’s really up to you how far geographically you want the employee to have to go from time to time. For example, if you do business at the other end of the country or even abroad, then you will want to broadly define the geographical area. However, if your business is only locally based, then the requirement to travel might be for no more than a few miles.

We’ve also provided that travel can be by any suitable means of transport as you determine to be appropriate and, in relation to overseas travel, that you’ll first ensure by checking with the relevant government departments that travel to a particular country is currently safe - you owe a duty to protect your employees’ health and safety so you need to think carefully before sending them to a war zone or to a country which has just been struck by, or is under serious threat of, a major natural disaster.

Travel pay

With salaried employees, it’s common not to pay the employee any extra for travel time and it’s also common to ask them to travel outside their normal working hours, for example before or after work. It’s really up to you whether you want to pay your staff overtime for travelling time or whether you want to ensure that all travelling time (or as much as possible of it) takes place during normal working hours. Our requirement to travel clause is widely drafted to give you as much flexibility as possible but it can be amended to suit your particular business requirements.