My worker wants to be paid for required training time — how does that work?

Last updated: October 6, 2026

Applies to: staffing Partners whose worker has completed a required training course and wants to be paid for the time. Required trainings are an employment or state-law requirement, so they are normally assigned to W-2 employees; independent contractors are generally not assigned them.

Summary: Yes — time spent on training we required is paid. You do not need to enter it, and in most cases you will find you cannot: training is a restricted time type that partners and workers do not see in the timesheet dropdown. Email support@ascen.com with the worker's name and which course they completed, and we will add the hours to their record so they are paid on an upcoming paycheck.

Is the time paid?

Yes, where the training was required as part of the assignment. That covers the onboarding courses we assign and state-mandated trainings such as harassment prevention or workplace violence prevention. A worker's offer letter commits to it directly: they are paid for all time spent in required training. Where a jurisdiction mandates a training, the time is paid — that is a wage-and-hour obligation rather than a courtesy, so it is not something that needs negotiating per worker.

If your worker completed something you or your client asked for that Ascen did not assign, tell us what it was before promising anything — that is a different question and the answer depends on what the training was.

Why you cannot enter the hours yourself

Training is a separate time type on a timesheet, and it is restricted to Ascen staff. It is filtered out of the type dropdown for partner and worker accounts, so if you go looking for it you will not find the option. This is deliberate rather than a gap in your permissions — it keeps required-training hours identifiable on the record instead of being mixed in with ordinary worked time.

Please also do not enter the hours as ordinary work time as a workaround. It gets the worker paid but it misreports what they were doing, and it makes the hours hard to identify later if the training is ever queried.

What to send us

Email support@ascen.com with:

The worker's full name as it appears on their Ascen record.
The client and assignment.
Which course they completed, and roughly when they completed it.
The time it took, if the worker has told you.

We add the hours against the worker's record and they are paid on the normal cycle — usually the next paycheck after the hours are entered and approved. For how that timing works, see Your worker's hours are approved — when do they get paid, and can a payment be expedited?.

How it shows up

Training hours are treated as time worked rather than as an absence, so they behave like worked time on the worker's record and on their pay stub rather than drawing down a leave balance. If your worker has finished a course and cannot see the time reflected after a pay cycle, ask them to contact us directly, or send it to us yourself with the details above.

A worker stuck on a training step is a different problem

If the issue is that a course will not complete, keeps restarting, or is blocking the rest of onboarding, that is not a pay question. The most common cause is a course that requires a passing score and not just completion, so a worker who finished the material but did not pass the quiz sees it reset. Point the worker at Required training courses: are they paid, and why does a course keep restarting?, which covers that and what to do if they already hold a certificate for the same training from another employer. For onboarding steps in general, see A worker of yours has an incomplete onboarding step — what Partners need to do.