On call retainers

There are as many different ways of working it as there are companies offering it - I've tried to find standards/best practices in the past and failed
 
Everywhere is different. I've got some crazy rates for doing it and also been paid nothing for doing it (expected with the job).
Really up to your to negotiate it before you accept the job.
 
Last job, time+1/2 if I was called in. Current job, £2k extra per year. Might never be called in, might be back here at 9pm. All depends on the contract. Is there wiggle room? i.e. Is this a company that might want on-call but doesn't know what to offer? If so and you can negotiate it, go with what's most important to you. If you value your time (young family, raging social life etc), try and steer them towards paying you for time on call. Stops them taking the mickey a bit. If you just want the cash, go for a flat fee and rejoice when they never call you, or lament your silly idea when you're in there every Saturday.
 
Previous Job: 4 hours at time+half on the call out, time+half for any subsiquent hours, 5% on-call allowance of yearly rate.

Current: No on-call :) however the permies get nothing during the week but weekends is an extra £50 a night.
 
Had a few different one's from flat rate to convoluted ones. Best I think was £10 for every 8hrs on call mon-fri, so that worked out as £100, then £15 for every 8hrs sat (£45), £20 for 8hrs sun (£60). So £205 for being on standby. Then you got £8 for each incident over the phone you took, if it meant a site visit you had to give them the first hour, but after that was time and a half.
 
I think our current rates (it's been a while since I did it last) are £3/hr for standby (5pm-9am Mon-Fri, and 24hrs on the weekend). If you are called it's at 1.5x, or 2x on Sundays. There is an extra payment of £50 if you are covering Christmas Day, Boxing Day or New Years Day.

There is also "expert callout" which is if you are called when you are not on call (normally by the person oncall as they are stuck) ... this is a flat £75.

When I last did it a few years ago it was at a lower rate and worked out at ~£256/week with no callouts, which seeing as I was covering a rota 4 weeks in 4 (yes really) for about 2 years with hardly any callouts was a nice little boost. I've had to refuse to be available for expert callouts now due to too much abuse of it by some people.
 
£250 a week, std. overtime rates if called out. Some weeks you go without any calls and the money is nice, then you get called at 03:00 AM 3 nights on the trot, and it's less nice :D
 
I get 25% of the relevant overtime rate (1.5 weekdays, 1.75 friday through saturday morning, double time saturday, sunday) and overtime rates once called out. Can get 4 hours OT paid for a callout when not on call. Doesn't seem like much money at first but it soon adds up!
 
Thanks for the feedback. We've been offered a flat rate of 135 for the week we're on call and then salaryx1.5/2/3 depending on the calendar.

Trying to look at it positively and objectively but it feels like I'm being shafted.

On the other hand, there's a good chance it's just free money.

Tricky one.
 
Last time I did this for a Building SOciety in the UK we got an annual incentive to go on the on call roster (which was about 1200 per year)

Then for every week we were on-call we got an on-call payment (I think it was close to 200 a week) At one point in time I was on call for 6 weeks straight.

It was all nice and cush for the first few weeks and I was thinking, money for nothing - but it is safe to say I earnt it in the last 3 weeks when we had issues with end of day and on more than 1 occasion I was on site for 48 hours straight getting it resolved. But at the end of the month the Bank balance looked good.
 
Last place: £200/week and 2x overtime on callout

Current: £50/day and £100/weekend or public holiday (so £450/week) with callouts being charged at pro-rata hourly rate.

We're pretty quiet generally and average about 2-3 hours callout per week, most of which can be done from home. Just had 3 weeks worth paid including xmas so a nice boost :)
 
As above, it varies a lot. I'm not formally on call myself but there are guys who are on 24hour callout. They seem to get a pretty decent package, 1.5x pay weekdays, 2x after 10pm or weekends/bankholidays. Minimum 4 hours if they get called out. Which is a fair chunk.

Works out ok if something needs patching in at 17:10 and you just turn the car around and pocket £150 for it. Not so great if you're called in at 2am for 3 hours to deal with a power cut.

It also depends on the call repsponse policy. For IT a lot of stuff can be troubleshot and resolved remotely. Other stuff can wait. What would be the deal breaker for me is whether you are at the mercy of end users or you have some discretion over whether you need to attend. I.E at 3am on a night shift there's lots of spare PCs about, someone calls about their PC is slow or broken to me wouldn't require a call in. "just log a ticket and use another PC tonight" would be a perfectly reasonable response. I'd want a lot more compensation if the policy decreed I'd have to go to site and fix it for them.
 
Not on call anymore, but when I was previously it was £30 retainer weekdays, £45 per weekend day and bank holidays. x1.5 rate if called out. £60 for christmas and new year + double time if called out. Believe this is being reviewed currently.

In theory should have at least 8 (or 10?) hours from last working before going back into work (health and safety stuff apparently) but still didn't stop people calling me at 9am after being up most of the night/morning on a call out. :(
 
I'm slightly shocked people do it for so little, last time I did on call it was 1 week in 4, a shade under £6k a year as compensation for availability and £100/hour if we were called. There was an arrangement for Christmas, I think it was something like £500 a day extra for availability on Christmas Day/Boxing Day/New Years Eve/New years Day.

That said, it was a high level position I was in so proportional to salary it was no more than OK.

I decided I wanted out last year as I damn hated having to have a laptop and phone with me all the time and being called at 3 in the morning every so often. Don't regret it at all, money wasn't worth the stress for me...
 
bigredshark said:
I'm slightly shocked people do it for so little
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For most people, it all depends. If you're single and saving for a house or something, every little helps. If you're in my position with a young family and very little spare time, then they would have to pony up a whole lot more than is currently offered to make it worth my while, so I've not signed up to the rota. Horses, courses etc.
 
enigmo said:
For most people, it all depends. If you're single and saving for a house or something, every little helps. If you're in my position with a young family and very little spare time, then they would have to pony up a whole lot more than is currently offered to make it worth my while, so I've not signed up to the rota. Horses, courses etc.
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Depends on a lot of factors, how cash rich your employer is, and how much work you would realistically be expected to do whilst on call. If you worked for a bank then yes you would probably get paid very well, but for a small private business they probably can't afford the same rates.

Sure you may get places that pay £500 a week + good overtime rates etc, but if you are called once a day you are really working for that cash.

I do on call at a lower rate, but I rarely actually get called, and I never have to worry about being called when it's a standard weekday daytime period as people are in the office anyway.
 
When I did it I got £190 a week then time and a half/double time depending on when the call was.

bigredshark said:
I'm slightly shocked people do it for so little
Click to expand...

Depends on the level of work etc required to me, when I did it the likelihood of being called at all throughout the week was extremely low, and if there was ever a call it was for a very trivial issue and never anything at what I'd call unsocial hours.

Thus to me it was worth it (was money for nothing to be honest), I don't drink anyway so that wasn't something to bother me and never had to be within arms length of a laptop at all times as it was pretty relaxed.

Would I have done it for that money in a more high pressure/critical setup, who knows.
 
Seems like a huge range of variation here, but of course it'll all be relative to your job/salary/position I guess. No doubt with some overlap between different people.
I get £270 per week, time x 1½ and £35 per phone call I take.
 
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