System Administrators: How much do you get paid for on call?

[JBod]

I am arguing to get it sorted at my place, I am wondering what others get to give me a ball park and some arguments to take to the negotiating table.

Thanks great OCUK minds!

 

[Gilly]

My guys used to get 15% but when the amount of people on it dropped there was a re-negotiation and they now get an hourly rate at ~£3ph going up to ~£4ph on Sundays/BH.

 

[Em3bbs]

I get about £200 a month more for doing 1 in 5 weeks. Obviously the real money kicks in when actually called out.

 

[JBod]

So some have a 2 level rate? Money for just being available and then cash for when doing the work?

Let me be clear this is on call but all work would be done from home. No travel needed or visiting a site. Also I prefer the flat rate approach as it discourages someone breaking something in order to "fix" it to get a little bit more cash than month. Also easier to manage the payments.

 

[crinkleshoes]

So some have a 2 level rate? Money for just being available and then cash for when doing the work?

Let me be clear this is on call but all work would be done from home. No travel needed or visiting a site. Also I prefer the flat rate approach as it discourages someone breaking something in order to "fix" it to get a little bit more cash than month. Also easier to manage the payments.

I have something similar.

10% pay increase just for being available 1 week in 5.

If I actually receive a call, it's then based on hourly overtime rates depending on time/day with a minimum of 4 hours. £20/hour during the week, £30/hour during the weekend. If going to site then we'd get mileage etc too, of course.

I would not have accepted flat rate unless it was noticeably more... basic for making yourself available at those hours & then compensation if woken up at 4am seems perfectly reasonable to me. Sure, it is open to abuse... but i've never seen that happen over the last year.

 

[SMN]

I work weekends, so its "planned out of hours work" rather than on-call, as such we get a flat daily rate which is roughly twice my daily rate.

 

[Gilly]

Flat rate is more expensive. If you have 6 people on a rotation they get paid every month regardless of whether they've been on-call or not. If you add someone else to the rota then you gain no extra work but have to pay out another flat rate.

With an hourly rate what you pay is what you get. The more staff on the rota the less each of them gets - but the business pays out the same.

When my guys are called they get an hourly rate which is 1.5x salary. That's for significant disturbance, not just having to attend the office.

 

[JBod]

Flat rate is more expensive. If you have 6 people on a rotation they get paid every month regardless of whether they've been on-call or not. If you add someone else to the rota then you gain no extra work but have to pay out another flat rate.

With an hourly rate what you pay is what you get. The more staff on the rota the less each of them gets - but the business pays out the same.

When my guys are called they get an hourly rate which is 1.5x salary. That's for significant disturbance, not just having to attend the office.

I was thinking slightly different flat rate, *if* you are rota'd to be on call you get £200 for that week. If you not rota'd then you get nowt.

Regardless of a call out/work done or not they get the £200. In fact it encourages systems to be more stable and not break out of hours (or to break monitoring ).

 

[Sin_Chase]

I did weekend oncalls. I was on £50 a day for being on call + £50 an hour when called in.

 

[crinkleshoes]

I was thinking slightly different flat rate, *if* you are rota'd to be on call you get £200 for that week. If you not rota'd then you get nowt.

Regardless of a call out/work done or not they get the £200. In fact it encourages systems to be more stable and not break out of hours (or to break monitoring ).

Hardly fair for the employee, unless of course you have really really low call-out freq...

 

[Gilly]

I was thinking slightly different flat rate, *if* you are rota'd to be on call you get £200 for that week. If you not rota'd then you get nowt.

Regardless of a call out/work done or not they get the £200. In fact it encourages systems to be more stable and not break out of hours (or to break monitoring ).

Well, that's what the hourly rate is. It just means that if staff take ill for a couple of days at the end of their week, for example, it is easy to cover with someone else.

There's no benefit from having '£200 a week' instead of '£3ph' (well, unless you do some calculations and work out that £200 for a week of TSB is next to worthless).

Good luck getting people to sign up to that rate.

[edit]Did you mean that no additional payment would incur whether they are called out or not?!?! I can't see anyone signing up to that. You are already effectively paying them half the going rate for standby by only paying them £200, you also want to negate any payments incurred by being contacted!

That's seriously tight. If you want to pay a flat rate to someone regardless of callout then you need to be above the market rate. £6-£800 a week would be closer.

 

[aln]

So some have a 2 level rate? Money for just being available and then cash for when doing the work?

Let me be clear this is on call but all work would be done from home. No travel needed or visiting a site. Also I prefer the flat rate approach as it discourages someone breaking something in order to "fix" it to get a little bit more cash than month. Also easier to manage the payments.

If you're fully expected to be available during on-call hours (ie, you can't enjoy your weekend by going out) then you should be compensated for that.

Still, actually spending your weekend doing work, as opposed to being available just in case, is an even greater inconvience.

Thats why people have two rates, it seems the happiest middle ground.

 

[JBod]

Realistically there would be little call out, maybe once or twice a week requiring maybe an hours work each time.

Since they respond to a monitoring system they manage (it sends out SMS alerts when something breaks) it would be extremely easy to game the system to get more money.

The kind of work is simply VPN into office, fix whatever is broken (reboot server, clear out some logs, restart some service) and thats it.

The expectation is to be able to start work on a problem within 30minutes of an alert being raised and they start accruing time in lieu.

 

[crinkleshoes]

You have 0 trust in employees then...

There has to be a balance of trust between a company and its employees... my system is entirely open to abuse with hour claims not even monitored, just signed and handed to payroll... yet no-one has abused it in the time I've been with the company.

You either need better employees, just be a bit more trusting in general (I know how hard that can be) or something else...

Would it not be feasible to "prove" why they claimed X hours for Y job?

You will have a lot of trouble getting people for those hours at that money it has the potential for 100 hours+ for £200/week... albeit extremely unlikely.

By all means include some scheme where whatever money you choose to offer includes some hours... but even including 1 hour for £200/week is a lot compared to other companies' rates...

My company's on-call rates are crap, but they're a heck of a lot better than what you're suggesting...



Even if it was just £200 for the weekend... that's still nothing compared to normal OOH rates... so if the employee actually has to do some work, rather than just be ready for it... they're really losing out.

 

[Gilly]

Realistically there would be little call out, maybe once or twice a week requiring maybe an hours work each time.

That's a lot of callout. Bear in mind it isn't the amount of work that is a lot, it is the amount of contact during non-work hours. The inconvenience of being available, having your phone with you, etc.

Since they respond to a monitoring system they manage (it sends out SMS alerts when something breaks) it would be extremely easy to game the system to get more money.

You need to have some trust in your staff. Either that or get new staff.

The expectation is to be able to start work on a problem within 30minutes of an alert being raised and they start accruing time in lieu.

30 mins is unrealistic.

In all, I'd hate to work for you! You want to pay lower than the going rate for the hourly rate, not pay any additional rate if contacted, and you don't trust your staff. Some manager!

 

[memyselfandi]

I'm not oncall any more (yay!) but I believe at our place the current rate is £3/hr for the time you are rota'ed oncall. For that you are expected to be in a position to respond to a call within 45mins (not necessarily start working, although it's expected that you should be in a position to do so reasonably soon after that period, but at least be able to call in and get details of what is going on / acknowledge the call).

Once called you are not supposed to claim for the first hour of any problem and then you get standard overtime rates for the rest of the call. Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Years Day all have an extra payment (£75?) for being oncall as well.

How often you're oncall will depend on the rota you are on, (I did spend 2 years basically doing every week at one stage).

 

[LiE]

£200 per 1 week you are on-call. There is only 1 person on-call at a time.
Which reminds me, I need to do the rota for Feb...

 

[Liquidfox]

I used to get a measly £500 a year for being on call 1 in 3 (5pm-9pm weekdays, 9am-9pm weekends), but then the hourly rates were anywhere from £25 an hour up to £75 an hour on weekends, minimum of 2 hours pretty much. Didn't really bother me as there was only 1 client on this, and it only happened 2-3 times a year, most of them which were scheduled ahead of time, or we had a feeling it was going to happen (An outside company installing their wireless for example, knew exactly what problems they were going to be facing).

 

[Em3bbs]

30 mins is unrealistic.

Maybe I have misunderstood, but you think 30 minutes is to short a time from callout to start working? I guess it depends how critical the system is but if where I work no one started looking at a problem for 30 minutes the company could literally be losing hundreds of thousands of pounds. We generally have to be looking at a problem within about 10 minutes.

 

[a1ex2001]

We generally have to be looking at a problem within about 10 minutes.

There is a difference bettween generally have to be and contractually obliged to be.

If I was expected to be working on a problem in less than 30 minutes I would expect a lot more money as that is effectively committed on call where despite not actually being in work you are tied to your house an unable to even go out to the supermarket to do your weekly shop.

Everywhere I have worked on call I have been expected to respond within an hour (ie achnowledge the call) and I have recieved an hourly rate for being on call which is topped up with an hourly rate when actually called to work on an incident. Last place I was on call I got an hour pay even if all I did was answer the phone and tell them to call someone else and the current place if I was still on call make a set payment for calls like that where you are just woken up or disturbed briefly.

To the OP I simply wouldn't work on you oncall system what if there was a more significant fault and I worked for 8 hours fixing it? I'd never risk being unpaid in such a situation. Trust your workers and pay them correctly it will be easy to spot anyone abusing the system!