Why you should pay your employees' commuting costs

COMMUTING: The average American spends an average of 27.6 minutes traveling one way, according to?workplace insights ?platform Zippia , totalling at least an hour of extra work time. This CEO believes if employers want their workers in the office, they should be doing whatever it takes to?make it less taxing. ?

"If people are commuting for an hour or two hours or three hours a day just to get to an office, that's work and they're on the clock," says Phil Libin , CEO and founder of mmhmm , a video communication platform.?"It's hard to imagine that spending three hours a day sitting in traffic is ever the right answer for any kind of company or job."?Libin shares why employers should compensate their workers for commuting costs, or how time — and money — can be better spent.

Read: The cost of commuting: Why employers should consider chipping in

WORK TIME: The?summer ?often amounts to employees spending longer and hotter days working from their homes or offices — but at software company Poll Everywhere , employees are enjoying another season of four-day workweeks. First trialed in the summer of 2022, Poll Everywhere decided to reduce their workweek to 32 hours again, giving employees three-day weekends all season long.?

"Life is very much about how you spend your days," says Robert Graham, CEO. "And it's not as if people are going to Europe every weekend, but somebody seeing their grandpa for the first time in a while or walking on the beach with their nephew — those things add up." Graham reveals what helped the company transition to a shorter workweek, and why they may institute the policy year-round.

Read: Why this company reinstated a 4-day workweek for the summer

STUDENT DEBT: Research compiled by the banking website CreditDonkey found that the amount of student debt varies significantly from state to state. In addition to a state's population, differing policies — such as the presence or lack thereof of forgiveness programs and the average cost of attendance of universities in the state — play a role in how much student loan debt people acquire.?

The average borrower in Maryland took out $42,543 in loans in 2021, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, topping the list. See which other states have workers struggling the most with debt.

Read: 10 states with the most student debt