On-call engineers - your advice please?

[BigDannyO]

My company normally provides technical support for our product during office hours only, ie Mon-Fri 9-5 excluding public holidays.

We have an OOH contact centre which is set up for paid Service Contract holders, but is not used for technical support.

We had an incident yesterday where an installer in Scotland (where it wasn't a bank holiday) was getting into trouble with configuration of the product before a handover at 1300. Their MD managed to contact my MD who passed it to me and I dealt with the problem as much as I could whilst enjoying the bank holiday festivities!

However, this has now prompted the other company's MD to start making demands of our company, that we should have 24hr tech support with engineers always available. My MD agrees with the sentiment and has put it to me that we should be providing this.

I have reservations about implementing this, which my MD and other managers don't necessarily agree with.

So if you're an on call engineer or work in TS please can you answer the following questions? I have my own views but seeing as my fellow managers don't agree with me perhaps I'm in the minority?

1) Is it fair to assume that weekend, bank holiday and eventually 24hr on-call arrangements are made with no remuneration, as it is considered part of your "job description", and "swings and roundabouts" because the company has pre-arranged holiday days between christmas and new year (which incidentally are already covered by the same engineers on a rota for Service Contract call-outs)?

2) Would you be happy using your personal mobile?

3) When a technical support call become unsolvable without the resources at the office, what is the personal responsibility of the engineer?

Would really appreciate people's thoughts on the above, thanks for your time.

 

[BigDannyO]

1) Nope. If your employees are given Bank Holidays then you should be remunerating these either financially or with time in lieu.

2) Not on your life.

3) As with normal support, you need pre-determined and contractually agreed points at which to escalate, and what is actually covered by 24 hour support.

Thanks, you've written exactly what I would have answered. What is annoying me know is that I'm beginning to feel that for sticking up for my team on these issues I am being unreasonable.

When I, and those who I am responsible for, were employed there was no implication of providing an OOH service for technical support, so I strongly believe that any service that is provided needs to be administered and remunerated properly. Unfortunately it appears I am alone in this, presumably because my fellow managers (sales and admin related) and MD are not the ones who will be providing the service!

 

[BigDannyO]

How long before someone complains about the use of the word engineer.

That's a non starter - the people in my department are degree qualified, MIET, IEng, CEng or a combination thereof.

 

[BigDannyO]

1. No, it's not fair to assume. What does it say in your contract of employment about out of hours support?

Absolutely nothing. We are entitled to TOIL if we are required to work over hours or at weekends, but that needs to be pre-arranged between employee and employer.

More over, what does it say in the customer's contract with your company about supported hours?

There is no contract in place for technical support, we advertise it is available during office hours.

3. Depends on the support model at the office, and what it is I guess. If it's a bespoke solution provided by your company, then it would be the support department's responsibility to fix. Then back off to dev/3rd line. If it's a vendor provided product then hopefully you'd have support to back off to with them. Really this comes down to how the support rota is structured. For out of hours call out you ideally want a backup engineer or a pool as additional knowledge contact points, or for fault handover if the fault runs on for an excessive amount of time.

We are the manufacturer of a bespoke system, so it's really down to us. If, during office hours, a call couldn't be resolved we would make arrangements to visit site. We make no promises on how quickly we will attend, but for Service Contract call outs we would do next working day, which is what we would normally aim for with tech support escalation.

I would want my OOH support engineer to be able to terminate the support call and arrange next-working day on-site response if necessary, but my contemporaries believe the call should be "dealt with there and then".

 

[BigDannyO]

The other managers probably expect them to go along with it because of 'the economy' and 'they should be grateful to have a job'.

It is precisely this. Not a great situation to be in.

 

[BigDannyO]

Done properly this is a nice little earner for you, your engineers and your company and your customer gets the level of support they want in order to perform their business. Done improperly, your customer is going to run rings around you and work you and your team into the ground with their demands.

Unfortunately I can see it being the latter. We aren't at the decision stage yet thankfully so I have time to make my opinion heard, just hope it will be considered!

 

[BigDannyO]

I'm on un-official all out, and yes I was told the same as you. My contract states that some elements of my job are required to be undertaken out of hours, and I will receive time in lieu in return. Problem being, I'm too busy to take my lunch hour and holidays, let alone any time in lieu. So the hours build up on my spreadsheet, and I have been refused payment in return.

I have to use my own mobile, but I switch it off when I'm asleep, otherwise I'd never get some kip!

Hmm, this sounds worryingly familiar. Our contracts are very basic at the moment and quite vague about working hours as it is. I'm already coming in way before my start time to set up every day and cant remember last time I had lunch, but up until now it hasn't bothered me because it's commensurate with my position.

I think any assumed OOH work without compensation would be taking a liberty. To be honest I'm not that keen on doing it anyway with things going on in my personal life, but could always do with extra money and want to try to remain professional.