You DON'T NEED TO ANYTHING(just about)
You could pay them 5-6 bucks an hr(whatever the minimum wage in your state is), but let's see how many GOOD electricians you'll get for that money.
I worked for a company one time...., a particular instance comes to mind, we go on a weekend to do some work, put the 6 hrs it took us to do it on the time card. Come Monday the boss rips me a new one for taking that long, then, right in front of me proceeds to write the charges at 9 hrs. Long story short, I wasn't working for that company 3 months later.
So there are few things to consider:
1: Is the time billable? If the employee comes with 8:30 hrs billable, and the customer is happy, what's your problem? Is it greed? You get paid for 8:30, why shouldn't your employee?
2: Even if it's not billable, little things like these can leave a bitter taste in your employee's mouth. Do you make enough to eat the extra half an hr? If not, then don't pay them, but if it is, and you don't pay them.... you really gonna lose some good guys.
3: How far do you send them at the end of the day? I've done service work for about 6-7 years. NOTHING takes ONLY half an hr in South Florida. More often than not it took 1hr plus to get back, paying them for half an hr seems fair to me.
4: Have you considered letting the employees taking the van home? I mean, if you have a job, you expect the employee to be there at 7:00 and leave at 3:30, that means they leave home at 6:30, and is back home at 4:00(considering half hr drive), why would you expect your service people to get home at 4:30?(never mind the fact that your shop might be further from their house). Again, during my "service times" I worked for someone that was least an hr drive from most jobs, but most jobs were 30 minutes from my house. Sure enough the owner let me take the van home and I would clock out when I left the job. From my perspective: If I'm 30 min away from home and you expect me to drive 1 hrs back to the shop, then another 30 min back home, I BETTER GET SOMETHING.
I'm looking for some input on this issue...
Do employees need to be paid for travel time back to the shop at the end of the day if they are in a company van?
ie: get to the shop at 7:00, travel 30 minutes, work untill 3:30, then 30 minute travel back to the shop.
with a 1/2 hour lunch, is this an 8 hour day or an 8 1/2?
thanks