Suppose there are two employees: Alice and Bob, who do the same job at the same factory. Alice has a 10 minute (20RT) commute, Bob commutes 35 minutes(70RT).
If you’re the owner of the factory, would you compensate them for their commutes? How would you do it?
I believe my company’s arrangements are agreeable for remote workers.
For those who are classified as fully remote, they can claim travel expenses on mileage up to a certain range. Basically, the radius of the city that their “core” office is based out of plus the surrounding towns. But they can’t claim more than that (unless they’re out of state and they’ll pay for like plane tickets and whatnot).
For those who are hybrid (expected to show up at least once a week) and fully onsite, they don’t get any mileage for travel to their home office but do get mileage to satellite offices, calculated by distance from the home office.
The compensation is also very generous. While I am hybrid, I have one day per week at my home office and one day per week at another, and that is more than enough to pay for my gas (even factoring in non-work related travel, which I admittedly don’t do much of).
But there are definitely some people who are able to benefit from this more than others. If you live a 5-minute drive away from the furthest office from your home office (would that I could be so lucky), you get to claim a lot of travel reimbursement with minimal actual travel, which seems unfair for those who are routinely asked to commute even further than their norm.