Should checking emails on the commute count as 'working hours'?

I think, increasingly, the concept of "working hours" needs to be seen differently by both employers and employees.

An offer of working hours, really, should be seen as a mutually-agreed estimate on the amount of time that should be taken in completing the work allocated to the employee by the employer.

If the employee completes the allocated work in a lesser time, then either the allocation is inadequate or the employee is efficient (or both), which may prompt a conversation about increasing workload and compensation accordingly.

If the employee takes longer to complete the allocated work then either the workload is excessive (in which case, overtime should be paid or salary increased, whichever best suits your business model) or the employee is inefficient - in which case, either the work is being done adequately (but slowly) and not further action need be taken or the work is not being done with adequate urgency and performance management action should follow.

Where the picture becomes confused is when the adequate completion of work *includes* a requirement for a given time window of availability or presence. A classic example is a call-centre worker who is expected to answer calls between 0900 and 1730. In this case, adequately completing their duties *implies* a fixed time-window of working but we should not confuse this with a colleague in their finance team on the same contractual hours who nevertheless leaves work an hour early because she has completed her workload for the day.

In both cases, the employees are being compensated for the commitment of resources to the job. In the case of the call-centre worker, one of those resources is a fixed amount of time. In the case of the finance assistant, it isn't: as long as the work is done in full, correctly and on time, the finance assistant can commit as much or as little time to the work as she needs to.

In this example, the finance assistant may be answering emails or running calculations as part of her commute. Her call centre colleague in the seat next to her, though, cannot start answering calls before the call centre opens at 0900, so he is free to play Candy Crush or do the crossword.

This may seem unfair, but the pay-off for the time-resource worker is that they have a resource (time) that they can sell to their employer when there is a demand: i.e. they can earn overtime. The non-time-resource worker cannot: if it takes her an hour longer to complete her reports this week because they were held up by a software crash, that's just bad luck.

In the context of the OP, then, most time-resource workers cannot use their commute as working time - so for them it would not count as working hours. Non-time-resource workers, meanwhile, are simply completing their workload, as contractually agreed, so it still wouldn't count as working hours.

Well put Robey. I'm increasingly hearing the phrase "work is something we do not a place we go to" and for many people that is the case. Unfortunately there are also many employers who continue to assess these workers on the amount of time they put in rather than the results they produce!

Well put Robey. I'm increasingly hearing the phrase "work is something we do not a place we go to" and for many people that is the case. Unfortunately there are also many employers who continue to assess these workers on the amount of time they put in rather than the results they produce!