Out of hours IT support pay

I have on call I think 1 week in 6 we get paid £250 for being on call plus £10 for each unique call we take, so if we get three calls about the same problem only counts as one.

For us you should only be on call on the late shift which is 1000-1830 and then on call from 1830-0630 Mon-Sun
 
The whole deal is rubbish. If you're really taking that may calls then the company should be considering full shift working rather than making you take the hit by changing out of hours support.

Frankly, saying the first 30min is free when a lot of calls last 10minutes is taking the mickey and if that was me, I would make damn sure all my calls lasted over 30 minutes out of principle.

Be VERY wary of companies who say they'll be "flexible". If they're not prepared to put it in writing then you can be damn sure that "flexible" will be forgotten when it suits them.

As the law stands I believe that you don't have to agree to a change in your working hours. It's up to the company to come up with something you are prepared to sign off on?
 
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covenantuk said:
The whole deal is rubbish. If you're really taking that may calls then the company should be considering full shift working rather than making you take the hit by changing out of hours support.

Frankly, saying the first 30min is free when a lot of calls last 10minutes is taking the mickey and if that was me, I would make damn sure all my calls lasted over 30 minutes out of principle.

Be VERY wary of companies who say they'll be "flexible". If they're not prepared to put it in writing then you can be damn sure that "flexible" will be forgotten when it suits them.

As the law stands I believe that you don't have to agree to a change in your working hours. It's up to the company to come up with something you are prepared to sign off on?
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This is a fair point. Is OOH work written into your contract?
 
I done out of hours at my old place, hated it. The only time I was paid extra was if I was called after 10pm and even then it was only £15 per call. Unless they are willing to pay you a lot more, try and get out of it.
 
Vauxmad said:
Forgot to add the new shift pattern

Week 1 8am - 5pm monday - friday
Week 2 9am-5pm mon - friday + 6pm-8am monday-thurs 6pm fri thru til 8am mon OOH cover
Week 3 9am - 6pm monday to friday
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According to:

https://www.gov.uk/rest-breaks-work/overview

Your shift pattern is illegal.

Daily rest

Workers have the right to 11 hours rest between working days
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If you get a single call overnight then this has been breached.

I also wonder how they would feel about a corporate manslaughter case if you fall asleep after being forced to drive into work for 9am after a week of no sleep?
 
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I'd look for a new job. You are going to get screwed over whatever is negotiated by the sounds of it.
 
FWIW, I do on-call work too.

We cover OOH 24x7 Monday -> Sunday on a rotation of 1 in 4, and the on-call rate itself is £210 for the week. If we get called, we get paid for the work on an hourly basis.

The biggest difference here though, is it is very rare to get a call-out, not 3-4 calls a night.
 
Haggisman said:
Your shift pattern is illegal.

If you get a single call overnight then this has been breached.
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No it isn't as the oncall portion of schedule given is not a "shift". If the rest break is interrupted by a call out then you should have a compensatory rest period to make up for the interruption.

(IANALNDIPOTV)
 
We have OOH here, the phone never rings, I don't think it has rung in about 3-4 years maybe.

We used to get £200 a week for taking it and £100 for every call we'd take.

Now because not many customers have 24/7 support it's £100 a week for taking the phone and £200 for every call we take.

I had a period of about 6-9 months where I was the sole keeper of the support phone, never once did it ring, easy money! Now that the rate has dropped and the support phone is shared I get significantly less obviously! :(
 
Funny..

On-call was attempted to be implemented in our work. Total being 9 hours a week (basically an additional week's worth of work a month).

Head office proposed £5 an hour. We flat out refused. Now there's NO on-call.
 
memyselfandi said:
No it isn't as the oncall portion of schedule given is not a "shift". If the rest break is interrupted by a call out then you should have a compensatory rest period to make up for the interruption.

(IANALNDIPOTV)
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So what would be considered a reasonable compensatory rest period?

If the OP gets 3-4 calls spread out over a night, he's going to get 1-2 hours sleep. To be then expected to be in work in the morning, and repeat for a week is an absolute joke.

Considering the attitude the company have taken re: this out of hours work, I wouldn't be surprised if, as the OP suggested, the flexibility mentioned consisted of "well, you did x minutes of calls last night, so come in x minutes late", not taking into account the additional time required to get back to sleep, or the effect the disrupted sleep pattern has.

Its certainly not something I'd be happy with unless the company added an extra 0 to the end of my compensation, and I wouldn't be doing it long term under any circumstances.
 
Haggisman said:
So what would be considered a reasonable compensatory rest period?

If the OP gets 3-4 calls spread out over a night, he's going to get 1-2 hours sleep. To be then expected to be in work in the morning, and repeat for a week is an absolute joke.

Considering the attitude the company have taken re: this out of hours work, I wouldn't be surprised if, as the OP suggested, the flexibility mentioned consisted of "well, you did x minutes of calls last night, so come in x minutes late", not taking into account the additional time required to get back to sleep, or the effect the disrupted sleep pattern has.

Its certainly not something I'd be happy with unless the company added an extra 0 to the end of my compensation, and I wouldn't be doing it long term under any circumstances.
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What the compensatory time is something that should be agreed as part of any changes.

If it is the OPs contract to be oncall then it's pretty much tough you need to do it or find a job elsewhere (which would probably be the same as any area providing IT services will have some sort of oncall which will be using roughly the same conditions unless they have multiple shifts instead).
 
The OP's situation sounds ridiculous.

We do on call here, and it will either be primary where you are expected to be first point of contact, or secondary where you are basically a backup for primary with a different set of expertise.

primary pays £275 a week, secondary £125. With overtime at 1.5X for every call out, if the call lasts 10 minutes it's marked down as 1 hours overtime.

I can go weeks of on call without being called, but on primary at least I expect I will get a couple of calls, the number ranges between 0-5 calls per week, with 5 being a bad week. secondary I pretty much never get called.

Expecting you to take 5-10 calls a night and then come into the office half asleep is not something I agree with, if you are getting woken up all the time you will be tired and unable to do your job properly.

Making the first 30 minutes of each call free is unfair too, this is basically taking advantage of you.
 
MowyTone said:
This is a fair point. Is OOH work written into your contract?
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Yes, we took on OOH last year.

OOH is from 5pm-7am weekdays, 24hr at weekend, Monday to Sunday

~£250/month on call allowance for 1 week in 6

Anything over 1 hour is paid at 1.5x, 2x at weekends/bankholidays. (All our callouts are above 1 hour unless you'd be blatantly taking the mickey).

If the call is after midnight on a weekday, can take time off the following day but this needs to be made up (flexitime)

We get on average less than one callout every 3 months.
Emergency cover only and the call has to be authorised by a managment representative to prevent "my account is locked out at 3am" type calls. The call goes to a single number and redirected to the mobile of whoever is on call.
 
covenantuk said:
Yes, we took on OOH last year.

OOH is from 5pm-7am weekdays, 24hr at weekend, Monday to Sunday

~£250/month on call allowance for 1 week in 6

Anything over 1 hour is paid at 1.5x, 2x at weekends/bankholidays. (All our callouts are above 1 hour unless you'd be blatantly taking the mickey).

If the call is after midnight on a weekday, can take time off the following day but this needs to be made up (flexitime)

We get on average less than one callout every 3 months.
Emergency cover only and the call has to be authorised by a managment representative to prevent "my account is locked out at 3am" type calls. The call goes to a single number and redirected to the mobile of whoever is on call.
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This is a reasonable OOH contract. The one offered to the OP is not :D
 
My company are thinking about providing OOH support (only 4.30pm-8pm Mon-Thurs), what would you guess suggest a reasonable hourly rate (1 x hr, 0.5 x hr etc) for being 'on call' these times would be?
 
here is how ours works

Mon 9am to fri 5pm , On call 0.25x hourly rate, call out 1.25x

Fri 5pm to Monday 9am, On call 0.35x , call out 1.35x

Bank hol and bank hol weekends (mon bank hol makes it 5pm Friday to 9am Tues) On call 0.55c , call out 1.7x

higher rates for Xmas and NY


the effect is a non bank hol week of evenings and weekends pays about 40hrs on call
 
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