Employment Contracts For Field Staff In New Zealand

Mike runs a small HVAC business in Hamilton. His team starts the day from home, drives to customer sites, uses a job app, keeps tools in company vans and sometimes gets urgent callouts after hours.

At first, a standard employment agreement seemed fine. But once questions came up about travel time, petrol, vehicle damage, customer complaints and lone working, Mike realised his field staff needed contracts that matched how the job actually worked.

If your staff work away from your main workplace, the employment contract is one of the best places to set clear expectations early. It can help you run jobs smoothly, manage safety, protect customer relationships and avoid awkward pay disputes later.

What Should An Employment Contract For Field Staff Cover?

An employment contract for field staff should cover the legal basics required under the Employment Relations Act 2000, plus the practical details that come with mobile work.

In New Zealand, every employee must have a written individual employment agreement. For field staff, that agreement should be more specific than a generic office-based contract.

At a minimum, your agreement should cover:

• The role: the job title, duties and any flexibility to perform related tasks as your business needs change.
• Place of work: customer sites, service areas, home dispatch arrangements, depots and any requirement to travel.
• Hours of work: ordinary hours, rostered hours, callouts, overtime and how changes to schedules are handled.
• Pay: wages or salary, payment frequency, allowances, commission or bonuses, with a commission agreement if relevant.
• Leave: annual holidays, sick leave, bereavement leave, family violence leave and public holiday rules under the Holidays Act 2003.
• Trial or probationary periods: if you use them, they need to be drafted correctly and agreed before the employee starts work.
• Policies: health and safety, vehicle use, privacy, devices, uniforms, customer conduct and expense claims.
• Problem resolution: the required plain-language explanation of services available to resolve employment relationship problems, including that most personal grievances must be raised within 90 days and sexual harassment personal grievances within 12 months.

Because field roles often change from day to day, your contract should also explain how jobs are allocated. For example, you might say work is assigned through your scheduling app, by a manager, or through a daily dispatch process.

If you need staff to be available for work beyond guaranteed hours, be careful. New Zealand law has specific rules for availability provisions. If your employee must be available to accept work, your agreement generally needs guaranteed hours and reasonable compensation for that availability.

Do Travel Time And Waiting Time Count As Work?

Yes, travel time and waiting time can count as work in some situations, but it depends on what the employee is required to do and how your business operates.

For most employees, the ordinary commute from home to work isn't paid work time. Field staff are trickier because their first work location might change each day, and they may be carrying tools, logging into an app, taking customer calls or driving directly between job sites.

Your contract should clearly deal with:

• whether the workday starts at home, at your depot, or at the first customer site
• whether travel between customer sites is paid time
• how after-hours callouts are paid
• what happens if a job is cancelled while the employee is already travelling
• whether time spent waiting onsite is paid
• how meal breaks and rest breaks work when staff are on the road

The Minimum Wage Act 1983 also matters. If time counts as work, you need to make sure the employee is paid at least the applicable minimum wage for that time. That can be easy to miss where staff are salaried but regularly do extra travel, admin or callout work.

A Practical Example

Say Priya runs a mobile pet grooming business in Auckland. Her groomers take vans home, drive straight to customers, upload job notes between appointments and return equipment to the van at the end of the day.

If Priya treats only the grooming appointment time as paid work, she may run into problems. The driving between customers, job notes and required vehicle checks may also be work time. Her employment agreements should spell out when paid time begins and ends, and her rostering system should match that approach.

This doesn't have to be complicated. The key is to define your rules in writing, then make sure your payroll and scheduling practices follow them.

Can You Require Field Staff To Use Their Own Vehicle?

Yes, you can require field staff to use their own vehicle if the arrangement is lawful, reasonable and clearly agreed in the employment contract.

If a personal vehicle is part of the role, your contract shouldn't leave it to guesswork. You should cover:

• the type of vehicle required
• whether the employee must hold and maintain a current driver licence
• whether the vehicle must be registered, warranted and insured
• how mileage or running costs will be reimbursed
• what records the employee must keep for reimbursement
• what happens if the vehicle becomes unavailable
• who pays for parking, tolls, fines and damage

Many businesses use a per-kilometre reimbursement rate. The right rate depends on your circumstances, and you may want to check current Inland Revenue guidance and speak with your accountant about tax treatment.

If you provide a company vehicle, your agreement or vehicle policy should cover personal use, fuel cards, maintenance, accidents, smoking or vaping, passengers, mobile phone use and returning the vehicle when employment ends.

Deductions also need care. Under the Wages Protection Act 1983, you generally need the employee's written consent before deducting money from wages, and deductions still need to be fair and reasonable. For example, if you want the ability to deduct unpaid fuel card charges or the cost of unreturned equipment, the contract should deal with this clearly.

What Health And Safety Clauses Do Field Staff Need?

Your field staff need health and safety clauses that reflect the risks of working alone, driving, using tools and entering customer sites.

Under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, your business has a primary duty of care so far as is reasonably practicable. That duty doesn't disappear because your staff are away from your office or depot.

For field staff, your employment contract should work alongside practical policies, including any remote work policy, and procedures covering:

• vehicle safety and fatigue management
• using tools, equipment, chemicals or machinery
• working at heights, in roofs, in confined spaces or around electricity if relevant
• manual handling and lifting
• lone worker check-ins
• personal protective equipment
• incident and near-miss reporting
• customer behaviour, aggression or unsafe premises
• when staff can stop work or leave a site because it's unsafe

You should also think about overlapping duties. If your employee works at a customer's site, that customer may also be a PCBU under the Act. Your team still needs clear instructions about who to contact, what risks to report and what they should do if the customer's site rules conflict with your own safety procedures.

A good contract won't replace real training. But it can make it clear that your staff must follow safety policies, use equipment properly, report risks promptly and avoid unsafe shortcuts to finish a job faster.

Can You Track Field Staff With GPS Or Job Apps?

Yes, you can use GPS tracking or job apps for field staff, but you need to handle it carefully under the Privacy Act 2020 and good employment practice.

Tracking can be useful for dispatching jobs, confirming arrival times, protecting staff, managing vehicles and responding to customer questions. The issue isn't whether tracking is always banned. The issue is whether it's reasonable, transparent and limited to a proper business purpose.

Your contract or privacy policy should explain:

• what information you collect, such as location data, job notes, photos, time stamps or vehicle data
• why you collect it, such as scheduling, safety, proof of service or asset protection
• when tracking is active, especially if staff take vehicles or devices home
• who can access the information
• how long you keep it
• whether information may be used for performance or disciplinary matters

Under the Privacy Act 2020, you should only collect personal information for a lawful purpose connected with your business, and the collection should be necessary for that purpose. You should also tell staff what you're collecting and why.

Be especially careful with after-hours tracking. If an employee has a company phone or vehicle, you may need practical settings or rules so your business isn't collecting more personal location information than it needs.

Customer information matters too. Field staff often see names, addresses, alarm codes, photos, site plans and contact details. Your contract should include confidentiality obligations and rules for handling customer data, especially if staff use personal phones or upload photos from customer sites.

Are Your Field Staff Employees Or Contractors?

It depends on the real working arrangement, but you shouldn't assume someone is a contractor just because they work remotely or move between customer sites.

Many field roles sit close to the employee-contractor line. For example, installers, drivers, sales representatives, merchandisers, cleaners, technicians and support workers might work independently during the day, but still be tightly controlled by your systems.

The Employment Relations Act 2000 looks at the real nature of the relationship. Factors can include control, integration into your business, whether the person can profit from their own management, who provides tools and equipment, whether they can subcontract, and whether they work for others.

The Employment Relations Amendment Act 2026 also introduced a contractor gateway test. Broadly, if the arrangement meets the gateway requirements, the worker is treated as a contractor rather than an employee for employment law purposes. The gateway focuses on matters such as having a written contractor agreement, the worker's freedom to work for others including competitors, the worker's ability to decline work, and the ability to subcontract or delegate work.

If the arrangement doesn't meet the gateway, the usual employee-contractor analysis can still matter. Getting this wrong can create real cost for your business, including claims for minimum employment entitlements such as annual holidays, sick leave, public holidays and minimum wage.

If you do want to engage contractors for field work, use a contractor agreement and clear statement of work rather than an employment contract. It should be drafted to match how the relationship actually works, not just to label the person as independent.

What Other Clauses Help Protect Your Business?

Field staff contracts should protect your customer relationships, equipment, confidential information and brand, because your staff are often the face of your business onsite.

Useful clauses often include:

• Confidentiality: covering customer lists, pricing, processes, site information, photos and access details.
• Intellectual property: making it clear your business owns work materials, reports, photos, manuals, designs or content created in the role where appropriate.
• Customer communication: rules for updates, complaints, delays, quotes, customer contract terms and not making promises outside their authority.
• Uniforms and presentation: especially where staff attend homes, retail sites, building sites or healthcare environments.
• Tools and equipment: who owns them, how they're stored, and what must be returned when employment ends.
• Side work: whether staff can do private jobs for your customers or use your tools, vehicle or materials outside work.
• Restraints: carefully drafted limits on soliciting customers, suppliers or staff after employment ends, where reasonably necessary.

Restraint clauses need to be reasonable to be enforceable. A broad clause that stops someone working anywhere in New Zealand for a year is unlikely to be the right answer for most field roles. A narrower non-solicitation clause focused on customers the employee dealt with may be more practical, depending on your business.

Templates often miss the operational details that make field roles different. Your agreement works best when it lines up with your rosters, vehicles, apps, safety systems and payroll from day one.

Key Takeaways

• Employment contracts for field staff should cover both the legal basics and the practical realities of mobile work.
• Travel time, waiting time and after-hours callouts should be clearly dealt with so payroll matches how the work is actually done.
• Vehicle use, expenses, equipment, deductions and insurance should be written down before problems come up.
• Health and safety clauses need to reflect field risks like driving, lone work, customer sites and unsafe premises.
• GPS tracking and job apps can be useful, but you need to be transparent and comply with the Privacy Act 2020.
• If you use contractors for field work, check the arrangement carefully, especially with the 2026 contractor gateway test now part of the employment law framework.

If you'd like help with your field staff employment agreements, vehicle and equipment clauses, contractor arrangements or workplace policies, you can reach us at 0800 002 184 or team@sprintlaw.co.nz for a free, no-obligations chat.