Would you say that 25% travel for a job is once every 3 months, on average?
No, I would say it means one week travelling out of four. That’s far more than once every three months.
Ed
Unless you’re away for three or four weeks at a time, once every three months.
Sorry, what job was this?
Or, you’re expected to be on the road 1 1/2 days every week.
This sounds like something in a job description – be sure you get it cleared up before you accept an offer.
It means you’ll be on the road for 25% of your work hours. That could be one full week a month, or a little over a day a week. My guess is that it’d be the former, or something along those lines, possily two short trips a month.
25% travel could be lots of things:
(1) A day at the boss’s/sponsor’s/customer’s facility each week, plus a half day of flying (e.g. a 12-hour Thursday every week, spent flying to and from Dubuque and then working a full day… which invariably means missing flights, crashing in hotels, missing birthdays, etc.)
(2) A week off site every month – could be somewhere cool or somewhere crappy, could be the same place every month or a new site every month – to do some secondary job that’s part of your description.
(3) A month at the end of each season where you’re set up in an apartment in another state/country and have to observe a major event: setting up a new store, launching a new product, testing the latest engine at the secret test track in Nevada.
It’s important to ask not only “how much is 25%” but also “where do most employees travel” and very importantly, “where would I be likely to travel?” You don’t want to find out once you get there that 25% means a month in Huntsville Alabama every three months, missing weekends at home with your family. Or with no family, your apartment or home sits empty and the bills pile up and maybe someone breaks in or a pipe bursts in December. And forget about having pets.
One job I quit it meant about one week a month. Except it was international travel, and required that I travel on weekends, and in steerage (tourist class) at that. So it actually meant I lost half of my weekends, and spent about a week a month at reduced functionality due to jet lag. It also meant working 10-12 hr days when abroad to try to accomplish 2 weeks worth of work during the week I was there, so no time to do touristy stuff.
So be sure to find out the particulars before accepting a a job. (not possible in my case, as this situation developed during the course of my employment.)
In some States, you’d be entitled to pay during that travel time, assuming you weren’t exempt, and YMMV, etc.
25% is whatever your employer defines it as
Some jobs consider airport time as leisure time, while you wait for your next plane. After all you could be doing something else?
Not the same but I had one employer that said they’d get me 40 hours a weeks. It consisted of 10 hour days, 12 hours days, split shifts and going home whenever I hit 40 hours (no overtime was the rule)
In my case travel time is based on nights spent away from home. If I left on Monday morning at 4:00 am, and returned on Tuesday at 11:40 pm, that was one day. Even if you left Monday at dawn and returned Friday at midnight that was only four days.
Vacations, holidays, and sick days did not count as work time, so if you had 10 holidays and 15 vacation days in a calendar year of 260 days to reach 25% you would have to spend 59 nights away from home. Last year I had 63.8% travel time.
I’ve always seen it as defined as nights away. A normal working year is about 230 to 240 days, so 25% travel would literally mean 55-60 nights away from home (and those estimates are usually low.)
My personal record is 55.3% travel, which frankly was about as much as I could possibly take, and the main reason I got another job.
25% travel is the maximum amount an interviewer will tell a job interviewee because he knows if he say 75% no one will accept the job. I think this must be standard practice in many industries.
If he really meant 25% he would have said “infrequent”. On the other hand, “occasional travel” means that you might as well not even own a house.
Slight digression here. I’ve taken jobs that advertised 100% travel and lived out of a suitcase (or two) for a few years. Some of us are more adventurous, even if we have to sit in cattle class. It helps to be minimally attached to things.
Since I’m here I may as well contribute my ¥2. As a road warrior, I always ask Jurph’s questions during the interview. Sometimes the travel isn’t very far, a few hours by auto. Sometimes it’s half a day’s plane ride across a major ocean. Only the person interviewing you can answer that. Only you can determine if it’s a company-paid mini-vacation or weekly descent into the bowels of travel hell, Detroit Metro Airport to be exact. Just joking, Motor City Dopers!
For me, even more important than the quantity and configuration of the travel is Kevbo’s question: whether time in transit is included as work hours. That is a dealbreaker for me. The job could have the most interesting duties, an office overlooking eyepopping beauty, and complementary blow jobs in lieu of coffee breaks, but I’d generally refuse if transit time is not part of work hours. If you’re distant from a convenient airport, may as well ask if driving time there is part of transit time, too. In many cities it could extend your travel drudgery an hour or more.
PS: No way would I want do one day a week if it involved air travel. Too much hassle for too few results. I hate flying.
Yeah, I agree with the posters…it is ambigous and all posts are correct. After I posted the question, i was thinking about what (in theory) 50% travel would mean. Once every 6 months (probably not) vs. every other week on the road.
Very open to interpretation!
- Jinx