Office attendance and the Jakarta commute
Where somebody is expected to work is a contractual term here, and in Jakarta it is one of the largest hidden variables in what a role costs. Agree a salary without establishing the working address and you have agreed a number against an unknown.
Where somebody is expected to work is a term of their employment contract in Indonesia, and in Jakarta it is also one of the largest hidden variables in what a role costs you. Agree a salary without establishing the working address and the commute attached to it, and you have agreed a number against an unknown.
What the commute actually looks like
The TomTom Traffic Index for 2025, published in January 2026, placed Jakarta 24th among the world's most congested cities, with a congestion level of 59.8 percent. That was a sharp climb from 90th the year before. A ten kilometer journey averaged 26 minutes and 19 seconds across the year, and peak-hour average speed fell to around 22.8 kilometers an hour.
Apply those numbers to where people actually live and work. A study of commuters travelling into Jakarta from Depok measured an average journey of 26 kilometers taking 86 minutes, with 43 percent riding a motorbike and 37 percent taking the train. Somebody living in Bekasi, Tangerang or Bogor and working in Kuningan or Sudirman is realistically looking at an hour and a half each way, and two hours in the wet season is unremarkable.
That is three to four hours a day outside the eight they are being paid for. A nine-to-five with a ninety minute commute is a twelve hour day, and the employee absorbs the difference.
Commuting time falls outside working time under Indonesian law, so none of it counts toward the statutory 40-hour week and none of it attracts overtime. The cost lands entirely on the employee, which is exactly why it shows up in the salary they ask for.
The place of work belongs in the contract
Article 13 of PP No. 35 of 2021 lists the place of work among the terms a fixed-term contract must contain. That has a consequence people miss: the working address is a contractual term, so moving somebody to a different office later is a variation to their contract that needs agreement.
Companies that hire on the understanding that the arrangement is remote, then decide eighteen months later that everyone should come into an office three days a week, discover that the change needs agreement. Getting the intended location right at the outset costs nothing at all, while changing it afterwards costs goodwill and sometimes costs you the person.
Working at your end customer's site
Some engagements involve staff attending the premises of your own client. That is workable and it needs to be stated explicitly in the contract, because an employee has a right to know where they will be expected to turn up and how far away it is.
It also changes the character of the arrangement enough to be worth checking. Indonesian law regulates the supply of labour to third parties separately under the outsourcing provisions of PP 35/2021, and an employee we employ, you direct, and a third party hosts sits close to that boundary. Tell us early when a role involves working at a customer site and we will take advice on how to structure it before it becomes a problem.
Discuss the address before you discuss the number
Ask where a candidate lives and tell them where they would be working, in the first conversation, before any figure is mentioned. The purpose is to leave them fully informed, and a candidate who accepts an offer without having thought about a two hour commute is a candidate who resigns in month four.
Expect the answer to move the salary they ask for. Somebody accepting three to four hours a day of Jakarta traffic is accepting a real cost in fuel, tolls, vehicle wear and time, and they price it in. A candidate an hour from your office will generally want more than an equivalent candidate fifteen minutes away, and that gap reflects a real cost they are absorbing.
Then look at whether the commute is necessary at all. Hybrid arrangements are entirely a matter of contract in Indonesia, with no statutory framework to work around, so two or three days in the office is available wherever the work allows it. Staggered start times help more here than almost anywhere else, because leaving at seven instead of eight can halve a journey. Both options widen the pool of people who will take your offer at the salary you had in mind.
How you structure a transport allowance matters
Many employers here add a transport allowance, and how it is written has an effect well beyond its face value. End-of-term compensation and THR are both calculated on a monthly wage figure that includes fixed allowances, so an allowance paid as a fixed monthly amount raises every one of those payments for as long as the person is employed. An allowance tied to days actually attended is variable and stays outside that base.
Neither structure is the correct answer for every engagement here. A fixed allowance is simpler and reads as part of the package, and an attendance-based one costs less when somebody works from home. Decide deliberately, because the cheaper-looking option today is not always the cheaper one across a five-year engagement, and we will model both against your own numbers.
What we do about it
We put the working address in the contract, we raise the commute with the candidate before terms are agreed, and we tell you when a salary expectation looks like it is being driven by distance instead of by market rate. That distinction is difficult to see from another timezone and straightforward from Jakarta.
Our cost tables show the fully loaded cost of a hire, and an allowance sits on top of the figures there. Send us the role, the intended office and a rough idea of where you expect to find people, and we will tell you what it will take.
