I.T Folks - Help with being on call

Afaik, on call type work isn't covered by minimum wage laws.

It isn't. It's nothing to do with minimum wage. It can't be, as you aren't working, you're just available to work.

No business could keep their head above water paying on-call rates above minimum wage across the board. Certainly that isn't the norm.
 
Have i read this right, some of you I.T. guys only get approx. £3-£4 per hour and that's ON CALL rate?
Have i missed something here (skim read the thread) or isn't that way under the min wage.
Makes me feel almost guilty for how much i get paid, but then i'm not really phone support, i'm 'everything' suport so to speak.
I too, work 8-5pm with lunch. I'm not officially on call but as i'm the sole I.T. support dude in the company if there's an issue, i get called on my personal mobile. Nothing was every written into my contract about this so i use a nice little android app called BLACKLIST, which ***** off any unwanted numbers! :)

That doesn't make any sense at all. You're saying someone getting £3-£4 an hour on-call isn't enough, but you don't work on-call at all.

How do you feel guilty for what you get paid? Most often a wage and an on-call rate have nothing to do with each other other than hitting your bank account at the same time.
 
It isn't. It's nothing to do with minimum wage. It can't be, as you aren't working, you're just available to work.

No business could keep their head above water paying on-call rates above minimum wage across the board. Certainly that isn't the norm.

Well it is according to the Government website, but note thats just hours worked. So I guess its a toss up which is better; hourly rate for hours worked might get you loads of money but have a crap time because you haven't gotten any sleep, or you might get no work and therefore no extra money. Whereas a fixed price is great if you don't have to do anything.
 
Our place give you £2 per hour for the whole week your on call less the 37 hours your contracted for (which you get your normal rate on) - then your expected to do your first hours worth of call-out per day without any additional pay on top of the £2 p/h. Further hours are paid at time & a half or double time if its a Sunday.
 
Our place give you £2 per hour for the whole week your on call less the 37 hours your contracted for (which you get your normal rate on) - then your expected to do your first hours worth of call-out per day without any additional pay on top of the £2 p/h. Further hours are paid at time & a half or double time if its a Sunday.

What type of support do you do? I'm in a very specialised area and so was surprised at the rather low offer.
 
That doesn't make any sense at all. You're saying someone getting £3-£4 an hour on-call isn't enough, but you don't work on-call at all.

How do you feel guilty for what you get paid? Most often a wage and an on-call rate have nothing to do with each other other than hitting your bank account at the same time.

Yeah, i wasn't sure i was understanding it correctly.
So is the £3-£4 (for arguments sake) on top of your hourly rate? If so, then fair enough.
 
Someone asked me today about a position that was on call 24/7 and that could involve weekend work.
My answer to them was that my rate for being on call per hr was x (more than it would be normally due to always having to be able to get to work etc. i.e. not miles away) and that if I was called out I would get 1.5x pay for the time I was out for.

That's my stance on it, if they want it. That's fine.
 
Yeah, i wasn't sure i was understanding it correctly.
So is the £3-£4 (for arguments sake) on top of your hourly rate? If so, then fair enough.

You get your normal salary for your contracted hours. Say 37 for example. Outside those hours (and the hours of normal business, so my guys cover from 6pm to 8am regardless of whether they themselves cover those hours (they don't) because there's always someone in the office at that time) you get paid £3 an hour at night or on saturdays, or £4 an hour on sundays. On top of that if you get called you claim your normal salaried hourly rate at 1.5 times that rate. So someone earning £10 an hour would earn £15 an hour plus the on-call rate for that hour if they had to attend the office.
 
I do a week on call rota at work, so 1 week every 2 months betwen the staff in the dep.
Were on call 24/7 for them 7 days
Flat rate of being on call is £500
Were still working mon-fri @ salary
If were called out within them 7 days of being on call were paid an extra £25 Ph
When not on call and should we be drafted in to help we get a day in lu and £75 ph

Can't say who i work for but i help keep the hardwear going that keeps you safe! As for what style of safe is anything :)
 
You get your normal salary for your contracted hours. Say 37 for example. Outside those hours (and the hours of normal business, so my guys cover from 6pm to 8am regardless of whether they themselves cover those hours (they don't) because there's always someone in the office at that time) you get paid £3 an hour at night or on saturdays, or £4 an hour on sundays. On top of that if you get called you claim your normal salaried hourly rate at 1.5 times that rate. So someone earning £10 an hour would earn £15 an hour plus the on-call rate for that hour if they had to attend the office.

Let that be a lesson to the TLDR'ers (like me on this occasion). I don't know why i didn't get it at first, but thanks for claryifing. :)

edit: In my case, i get the time off in lieu if say i have to work a weekend day configuring the network, as its the only time when it's not flooded with users. To be fair to my boss in the past, he's offered the choice of money or time off. Time off is often more beneficial to me so i chose that. Most other employees don't get offered either.
 
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Been about 5 years since I did any on-call but at the time we got

£600 per month flat
£50 per call that could be dealt with offsite (vast majority)
£250 for attending plus 1.5x for each hour worked.

On call one week in 4, including the weekend.
 
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The last time I was on call (which was a very long time ago) it was a £25 a night on call payment with the first hour of any overtime worked done for free. Anything over an hour was charged at standard overtime rates (1.5 standard, 2 for unsocial hours and Sundays.)

Invariably the secretaries would then mess up your timesheet and it would take another month to actually get the money right! :D
 
i think what he means is that hours worked is only the length of the calls and the amount of time that they took to resolve or escalate. Just sitting at home with your feet up does not qualify as hours worked. Well i think that is what he was saying.

The reason why the company i worked for was paying £75 flat rate is because if they paid any more it would not be profitable enough for them. It would be cheaper for them to either out source it to another helpdesk company or hire some cheapo graduate or something. But they would prefer to pay the current workers £75 flat fee because that way they get the expertise of the normal workers and they get a bit extra money.

I liked doing it and i would do it once a month if i could. It can get a bit tiring if i had to do it more often, especially working the early shift as well. Some nights i would buy some beers and just have a normal night and not get any calls and get £75 for it. :D
 
My guys get paid by the hour and then time and a half (normal overtime rate) if called out.

[edit]£200 a week for being on call is very little.

£3.07 for a normal day/saturday and £4.09 for a sunday. Equates to around £400 a week without being called out.

How often would your week of on-call come around?

Massively more than the other side of the fence gets, we get around £260 a week for on call, luckily I never get called out! Time 1/2 though if you do get called out.
 
As in hours worked whilst you're on call, eg you get 5 calls total time 3 hours worked.

Ah, yes, worked hours get claimed as overtime. It's only on-call whilst not working I was meaning.

Massively more than the other side of the fence gets, we get around £260 a week for on call, luckily I never get called out! Time 1/2 though if you do get called out.

That's a surprise to me. It's mostly union-driven so I thought it would be similar.

Now that I think of it though, the teams nearest you are on less because of their TUPE conditions. They have the option of switching T's & C's but would lose other benefits if they did.
 
I used to get £200 a week then time and a half weekdays/double time weekends if there were any calls.

Reason for the relatively low amount was that there was simply hardly ever any calls, could quite easily go a week not getting anything.

Wasn't much hassle for me as I don't drink, and it wasn't the type of place where if the phone went you had to do it all there and then if you were busy apart from extreme circumstances.

Hilly, OT but are you an Aspire person? :)
 
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£60 a night for being available and then time and a half for any calls.

You're also allowed a lie in if you're called at a really antisocial hour and it lasts a certain amount of time.
 
What type of support do you do? I'm in a very specialised area and so was surprised at the rather low offer.

Well only 1ls work 24/7 - everyone else in company - no matter how specialist gets the same on call deal. Most people only do 1-2 weeks a month if they do it at all.

I opted out - didn't seem worth it to me, I think the standby rate needs to be a proportion of hourly rate to make it really worth doing.
 
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