I.T Folks - Help with being on call

I did 24/7 for 7 years (only I could do it (was application specific)) - it finished a year or so ago and whilst I miss the money (the £3 hour seems about right) - I do not miss the stress one bit. It really can get to you over time - getting woken at 1-2am and still having to do your normal day sucks. Logged on Christmas day != Fun.

If you can do it in shorter bursts it's fine but my m8 does it for his firm now (his is a flat hourly fee then if they get a call its like 30-50 an hour) and he said it's a bind especially with family (if your out and have to shoot home/office) etc.

If I was doing it now I would want a heck of a lot more money - I do minor cover now for shorter hours.
 
I get £250 per week and then overtime for any hours worked/call outs during the week.

It's OK, as pointed out probably not the industry average but also I don't get called that often, so swings and roundabouts.

At the end of the day i'm happy to get some extra money!
 
I think our oncall rates are £3 an hour now for being on standby to respond to priority 1 incidents (i.e. system down). That's for period from 5pm-9am and all weekend. If we are called then it's 1.5x (or 2x on Sundays and Bank Hols). There are also extra flat payments for covering Christmas Eve and Day and New Years Eve and Day. If you are called when you are not actually on call to provide assistance then that is classed as expert oncall and is £75 flat rate (for which you are only expect to provide advice and not dial in or travel to site).

I stopped being oncall a couple of years ago when my job changed, (and about 3months before they increased the hourly rate to £3 from £2 :(). It was a bit cushy for me at the time as I was oncall 1 week in ... erm ... 1 but I was on a couple of accounts which I had supported for several years and were pretty much problem free so I was averaging only 1 simple call a month (going on leave for 3 weeks finally forced them in sorting out the rotas). A nice boost to monthly income for very little work but unfortunately I don't get it now.
 
When I worked at the company previous to the one now we got £250 for a weekend and £100 in the week

Week work was 5pm - 9pm and weekend was 7am - 6pm.

Most of the time things ran smoothly, around 5-10 calls on sat and usually none on sunday.

I think it was a fair amount as it meant we couldnt go away for weekends and had to stay 1 hour from the office to cover any problems. Saying that I didnt go away a couple of times to cities 4 hours drive away. I took a couple of calls very hungover on sunday but easily managed to resolve problems as I alway took a laptop.

On ~ 20k wage, £250 for a weekend is fair in my opinion.

£3 an hour is peanuts for on call. Being on call limits you to what you do at weekends. I go away a lot and dont want to be locked down for only £20
 
my boss tried to get me to be on-call for free after I'd been at the company a couple of months.

I said lol no..

ended up negotiating about 4.5k a year (£25/day) for alternate weeks (any time out of office hours) for critical problems only.

but I don't sit around waiting to be called, if there's a call I'll just drop what I'm doing.
 
Last edited:
Gilly said:
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.
Click to expand...

Epic maths fail there?

£200 a week is very little you say, but at the rate you give for your guys, Sam would be on only £139.64 for the hours he's been asked for!

£200 a week is very little apparently, but your guys would get paid under £140 :confused:
 
I'm on call right now, although our software is Oil&Gas Specialist so it's pretty quiet ;)

Weekdays 6pm - 12pm get's £50 and Weekend 12pm -> 8pm gets £100

We don't have to pick a day, most people do for the money and no one has been ever forced to do a day...!
 
Been a while since i did it, but it used to be:

£20 per 8hrs on call Mon-Fri (which was 4pm to 8am, so 2 x 8hr blocks)
£30 per 8hrs Saturday (3 x 8hr blocks)
£40 per 8hrs Sunday (3 x 8hr blocks)

From that the first 2hrs for any incident were 'free', after that you got paid either time (mon-fri), time and a half (sat), Double time (Sun) for any time spent on it after that, if you spent all night (during the week), you would hand over at 8am to the daily support folk and get the rest of the day off to prepare for your next on-call.

So a minimum of £410 per week on call. But that could be to do anything from fixing a printer to sorting out servers/core switches, about the only thing i wasnt expected to do was Oracle/Sun stuff, they had a seperate team. The less skilled/experienced folk on the service desk and desktop teams got less.

Have also been at places where it was a lot less, seem to recall me and Gilly worked the same on-call years back and it was nowhere near that good! :D
 
I work a 1 in 3 on call. Hours are office close 17:00 to office open 08:00 (Monday to Friday) and Friday 17:00 to Monday 08:00 to cover the weekend.

We get a nightly retainer, a work mobile phone, a paid for home phone line and internet connection.
If we get called and the call (fault) is nothing to do with our team we book 0.5hour (at overtime rate) disturbance call.
If we get called and the fault is our team responsibility, we book time worked (at overtime rates).
If I need to leave the house to deal with the call it's a minimum of 2.0 hours (at overtime rate), obviously more if the fault takes longer to deal with (book hours worked door to door) plus mileage expenses.

Oh and we aren't expected to sit in by the phone waiting for the call, just be able to respond within an hour from initial contact.
 
[TW]Fox;20617427 said:
Epic maths fail there?

£200 a week is very little you say, but at the rate you give for your guys, Sam would be on only £139.64 for the hours he's been asked for!

£200 a week is very little apparently, but your guys would get paid under £140 :confused:
Click to expand...

Makes sense to me;

144 hours Monday - Saturday
40 hours Standard work = 104 hours
24 hours Sunday

104x3.07 = 319.28
24x4.09 = 98.16
= 417.44
 
NiCkNaMe said:
Makes sense to me;

144 hours Monday - Saturday
40 hours Standard work = 104 hours
24 hours Sunday

104x3.07 = 319.28
24x4.09 = 98.16
= 417.44
Click to expand...

But that's not the hours Sam is saying in his example, so Fox is correct in saying that Gilly's rates don't add up to much based on the hours Sam says he would have to be on call, and that £200 for the hours Sam's been asked to do would be more money.

Sam said:
Guys

Let’s say for example my company wanted me to be on call from -

Monday - Friday - 5PM > 8:30PM

Saturday - 8:30AM > 8:30PM
Sunday - 8:30AM > 8:30PM
Click to expand...

So 5pm to 8.30pm x 5 = 17.5 hours
Saturday = 12 hours
Sunday = 12 hours

29.5 hours @ 3.07 + 12 hours @ 4.09 gives you £139.65, which is less than £200 ;)
 
I work out of hours on call every 3rd week 5pm - 9am monday to thursday and then 5pm friday through to 9am monday. I get £210 a month for this.

On average get about 3-4 calls a night and maybe 2-3 calls on the weekend.

When on the night shift we dont have to work the day shift and then get the following monday off as well for missing the weekend.
 
NiCkNaMe said:
Makes sense to me;

144 hours Monday - Saturday
40 hours Standard work = 104 hours
24 hours Sunday

104x3.07 = 319.28
24x4.09 = 98.16
= 417.44
Click to expand...

Except Sam has 17.5 hours on call Monday to Friday, 12 hours Saturday and 12 hours Sunday per week.

So your maths are as bad as Gillys :p
 
After attempting basic maths it would seem if we are 'required' to do this new 'on call' service desk work through the weekend i would be paid an additional 860 quid for the year.
So far we would do 6 weekend shifts a year so works out at about £143 per weekend.
We would be paid then over time for any calls we take so long as each call is in a different hour. (if 20 calls come in one hour still only one hours pay.)

So far no mileage scheme has been agreed so i could end up paying out quite a bit if i have to do x amount of trips to and from the office. (i have the ability to work from home but the kit and VPN connection is temperamental so if for what ever reason i cannot work i have to travel in.)
If i was paid to be on call per hour for that weekend rather than a % of my wage as the weekend regularity could rise as our staff keep quitting and or sickness.

In fact looking at it again im only paid half that 143 quid as half of the percentage is to be on call for the on call person.
 
Gilly said:
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?
Click to expand...

Can I come work for you? :D :p
£200 a week, thats like a CPU a week.
 
Not worked for anywhere that would pay/pay extra per call for being on call.

Last placed I worked (never done it myself tho) paid £17 per normal working day for being on call and £49 per day for sat/sun.
 
Thanks for everyone’s input, i just needed to get my head around the average really. It’s not something I’ve ever looked into before. As far as I’m concerned it needs to pay me a minimum of £250 per week for me to even consider otherwise ill let them find someone else (good luck the balls firmly in my court haha)

Thanks again
 
I missed the fact he'd only be covering a small amount of hours. My maths is bob on cos I checked it on our claim form ;)
 
I just negotiated contract changes for my guys, they were on call anyway - they just get paid for it now.

£100 a week to be on call, out of hours stuff limited to security breaches or site down. Minimum call out fee to be 1 * hourly rate, billed at 30m increments for every 30m thereafter.

Scheduled work out of hours is prearranged and gives time off in Lieu, with some leeway for travelling.


I also tend to do extra weekday nights for 1 specific customer which pays £67 per night, won't do more than 1 in 4 weekends though
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom