Every Journey Counts: How the Court of Cassation Changes Work Travel Time
On November 23, 2022, the Court of Cassation issued a decision with significant consequences for companies employing mobile workers. By reclassifying certain journeys as actual working time, it disrupts long-standing habits in many sectors. And it’s fair to say the news went by... like an unregistered letter.
A Judgment That Changes Everything (Well, Almost)
The case involved a mobile employee required to use a company vehicle, follow a schedule set by their employer, and remain reachable during travel. Standard, right? What’s less standard is that the Court of Cassation ruled that travel time between the employee’s home and their first or last clients of the day must be counted as actual working time.
📌 Reference of the ruling: Cass. soc. November 23, 2022, n° 20-21.924
As a reminder, until now, Article L.3121-4 of the French Labor Code clearly distinguished between “home-to-workplace travel” and “actual working time.” That’s no longer so simple. This reversal is also in line with European case law.
But What Exactly Is a Journey Counted as “Actual” Working Time?
The Labor Code defines actual working time as a period during which the employee is at the employer’s disposal, complies with their instructions, and cannot freely attend to personal matters. So, a technician on the road during the home/work journey, reachable and directed by a precise schedule… ticks all those boxes.
And here’s the rub: many employers continue to ignore this decision, either out of ignorance or simple inertia. The result: they risk massive back pay claims if they have to regularize several years of outdated practices.
Why Did This Judgment Go Unnoticed?
Quite simply because old habits die hard. Most employers still rely on the canonical version of Article L.3121-4. Yet the law evolves, and legal risk only increases.
Many companies are still unaware that all journeys can now be subject to reclassification. And this doesn’t just concern large corporations: SMEs and even businesses with fewer than 10 employees may be affected as soon as they employ mobile technicians and fail to account for travel time from home to the intervention site.
What Are the Practical Consequences for Employers?
Beyond the obvious need to pay overtime linked to travel time, employers must above all adopt a new approach:
- Optimize journeys to avoid unnecessary overruns,
- Rationalize scheduling by considering the employee’s actual starting location,
- Review reporting models to include these new criteria.
Cadulis and Travel Time: Turning a Constraint into an Opportunity
Cadulis didn’t wait for this decision to anticipate the issue. Our platform already takes all journeys into account when calculating intervention times. And that’s not all:
- Journeys are automatically calculated from the employee’s departure address (home or depot),
- Detailed exports allow you to visualize time spent on the road,
- This data is reusable for decision-making dashboards, useful for HR as well as operational management.
The unexpected bonus? By analyzing these times, some companies are now adapting their recruitment strategy: the employee’s location becomes as important a criterion as their skills.
What Are the Risks of Ignoring This Turning Point?
Ignoring this ruling is like playing with a match over a barrel of unpaid overtime. In the event of a dispute, regularization can extend over several years. For a long-serving employee or a group of field workers, the bill can quickly make a year-end bonus look like pocket change.
The Real Challenge: Changing Mindsets
The real issue isn’t technical. It’s cultural. As long as the norm is to consider journeys as a “gray area,” companies will continue to fly blind—at the risk of running aground on the legal reef.
What if we finally recognized time spent on the road for what it really is? Work.
In Conclusion: Better Safe Than Sorry
This ruling marks a turning point. Not a tidal wave, but a slow, steady groundswell. Ignoring the reclassification of travel time as actual working time is taking an unnecessary risk. It is therefore urgent to:
- Comply with current law,
- Use tools that take this into account,
- Turn a constraint into an operational performance lever.
Travel time is no longer a blind spot. It’s valuable data—as long as you see it coming.
