Misleading job ads

Job advertisements for homecare roles often leave out important information about what time you will be paid for.

Often, homecare workers are only paid for the time they spend at care visits (aka ‘contact-time only’). Yet time spent travelling from one visit to the next and time spent waiting for the next visit to start also count as payable working time. In many cases, the worker is paid no more than the National Minimum Wage as a result of these unpaid gaps between visits. In some cases, workers are illegally underpaid. 

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In this scenario, workers are sold a job on the basis of a certain hourly rate of pay, but end up being paid far less than this per hour. To find out where you stand in relation to this issue and to learn what you can do, see our working time guide.

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During the recruitment process, the homecare employer often leaves it up to the applicant to decipher that they will only be paid for contact-time only, as opposed to pro-actively offering this information and explaining its consequences on the hourly rate of pay. Unfortunately, many applicants do not know what questions to ask during recruitment, and only appreciate the detrimental effect of being paid for contact-time only once they receive their first few payslips.

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Note that in the vast majority of cases, job advertisements for homecare roles simply do not provide information about what time workers will be paid for. In this scenario, the job advertisement is unlikely to be considered misleading. But if there is any wording in a job advert you think could reasonably be classed as misleading in respect of its claims about pay, report it to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).

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The ASA is responsible for “acting on and investigating complaints about advertisements, as well as proactively monitoring and acting against misleading advertisements” (House of Commons Library, 2025, p.4).

You can report a misleading job advertisement to the ASA here.