Working Time Regulations and all that jazz.. expectation of out-of-hours work (on call!)

[Scam]

Ok here we go.. this is probably more of a vent than anything but..

I currently work in a role that in-part helps support an external vendor's secure platform for file/media storage. We used to have a system provided by another vendor where they provided 24/7 first-line support which was great. But we ditched them and in an attempt at penny-pinch went with another vendor that did not provide first-line support. So we set-up an internal company distro and phone number whereas users (from our company, and external) can get hold of us. This worked ok for a bit, but then COVID struck and our user base went from approx 4,000 to 20,000+ users. Since then we've been struggling, and a lot of this stuff can be urgent (working with creative people, reviewers that only get access to stuff for a limited amount of time like 48hrs so when they decide to login and view and have issues, they panic and it's "omg I need this resolved now!!11" ). More and more, we're getting emails and contact at the weekend and there's literally me, and my boss and someone else both in the US.

I work in the media industry so out-of-hours work is not uncommon, it's part of it. I accept that. But it should be the exception, not the rule for the sake of it. And the fact we are now the first-line for a platform where it can be urgent for users to access seems very unfair, if said user is trying to access say on a Sunday morning. My American boss's attitude is that "it's not that much work" or "it's part of the job" and yes he is a complete HR nightmare walking and a moron to boot. His work is his life, unfortunately.

We are in the process of moving to another system and I was hopeful that this would provide first-line support, and the whole problem would go away, but I've just discovered that it has not been discussed as part of our contract, and just got off a very rage-inducing call where my boss seemed happy to let things continue as-is. And downplayed the whole idea. Yeah.. no.

I have already spoken to HR about this, thought I had the support of our IT team that are project-managing the transition, but that seems to have ebbed away quickly. So, tldr what sort of protections should I have in my contract, or maybe in the Working Time Regulation? I have obviously signed the working time waiver though I'm sure my HR can help but as soon as they open a can of worms...

 

[jaybee]

What does your contract say and how is it written with regard to the grey areas. You know the bits like "...would be expected to work out of hours from time to time to support the business..." etc etc.
Is it overtime? When does it become overtime? How is it paid?
In my experience it varies from place to place. Usually the expectation is that there is no expectation unless formally agreed and planned. For it to become expected shows a big problem they are not addressing properly as one day someone will say no, and company becomes shafted. If it bothers you and you are not being fairly reconciled, I would consider tackling it head on and politely going to HR with your concerns. Warn them sternly, that you are giving them warning that you are going to stop doing it unless XYZ happens. That's an approach you could take atleast.

 

[peterwalkley]

You should be very pointedly illustrating they've gone from paying someone to doing it to getting you three to do it for free (or rather no overtime) and 5 times the workload (4K to 20K customers). There's reasonable and there's having the wee taken. Sounds like you're going to have to get stroppy and make it their problem to get attention. A few options spring to mind:

* If its your personal phone, then tell them no more calls and they will be providing a company phone. You will only use that phone for company business (so its not a taxable perk).
* Tell (not ask) them that any time spent answering calls out of hours over a certain limit (e.g 2 or 3 hours) will be taken back as TOIL (time off in lieu) in the week following.
* Your daily workload needs to be adjusted to take into account the time spent doing this. Any support call is a "context switch" that takes your focus away from expected tasks.
* No calls will be taken between 11pm and 8am unless by prior arrangement and TOIL applied. You need your beauty sleep.
* Ask to see the SLA's (service level agreement) with the new vendor. IT don't care because they're not the ones picking up the slack. Make them care by having them added to the circle of people called.
* The more people in the call list the better. Three is far too few, if someone is selfishly ill, takes a holiday etc, they're stuffed. It needs a proper rota.
* Was any training provided for this. Are you really the right person to be doing it anyway.
* Polish your CV.

On call is something that comes with the territory, but it needs to be organised properly and fairly distributed. Yours clearly isn't.

Good luck.

 

[darkblade]

Hmm, how many more signals do you need before you realise it's time to move on? Seriously dude, it's not worth the stress and hassle.

If you want to stick with it, then a proper support model and SLA needs to be drawn up and agreed to by all parties ("you" most importantly). This will likely constitute a change in your original job, so you will have some power to negotiate it - but I appreciate you appear to be dealing with morons.

 

[Begbie]

Are you getting paid for the overtime? Wouldn't be doing any of it without pay - unless you feel like the job pays more than the normal and moving jobs would see a significant loss.

 

[BongoHunter]

I would make your feelings very clear to your boss before they complete the negotiations on this new bit of software, they are probably looking to save a few quid on support as they think they have you for it - the equation may well be different if they have to hire someone new.
Americans attitude to work can be insufferable at times, but telling them what you need not what you would like often goes a long way in my experience.

 

[swillsy]

Just don't answer every call and say you're busy when it's out of hours dude. The only reason they are calling you at the moment is because you're picking up.

 

[dlockers]

This thread is hysterical. I think you should be putting the effort in tbh. I mean you probably earn more than 45k in a multi national.

 

[Scam]

Looks like I needed to update my ignore list

But yeah thanks guys. The VP in the IT team wasn't on the call yesterday so my first step is to make it clear this is his responsibility as well. He needs to be arguing for a better support model from his IT pov, so it's not just me telling my boss I don't want to do it. My dotted line manager here in the UK (very normal, nice guy) has already mentioned to the IT VP's boss (CIO) that we're stretched too thin and this method of support is not fair. So I do have a few avenues to go down.

What does your contract say and how is it written with regard to the grey areas. You know the bits like "...would be expected to work out of hours from time to time to support the business..." etc etc.
Is it overtime? When does it become overtime? How is it paid?

Salaried, no overtime, work outside business hours from time to time. The usual covering all bases.

* If its your personal phone, then tell them no more calls and they will be providing a company phone. You will only use that phone for company business (so its not a taxable perk).

Work phone. I actually dual SIM it and use it as my personal. Carrying two phones was tedious.

* Ask to see the SLA's (service level agreement) with the new vendor. IT don't care because they're not the ones picking up the slack. Make them care by having them added to the circle of people called.

It seems - as far as I'm concerned - the vendor's SLA is fairly useless for this argument. We're talking about first point of contact when people can't login and currently that means we'll get hassled first.

If you want to stick with it, then a proper support model and SLA needs to be drawn up and agreed to by all parties ("you" most importantly). This will likely constitute a change in your original job, so you will have some power to negotiate it - but I appreciate you appear to be dealing with morons.

Yeah. My main argument needs to be that this is a change in role, but I'm not seeing much wording in my contract that would support this. My contract does say "support the business with blah blah" but it doesn't suggest much with regards to hours.

Like I say, I'm pursuing via going around my boss's back to get the IT people to force this discussion. I do want to stay at the company, so dragging my boss to HR and causing a huge fuss is not going to be massively useful at this stage. I have mentioned it to my HR rep here and she fully supports me. But they're not doing anything yet.

 

[darkblade]

Salaried, no overtime, work outside business hours from time to time. The usual covering all bases.

Outside hours from time to time means supporting planned releases, upgrades etc or issues that might overrun beyond the working day.
It does NOT mean call out at short notice.

Your company needs a support model and support agreement including a rota.
Until they start putting that in place and negotiating - you cannot be expected to respond to phone calls or emails outside office hours.

 

[jaybee]

Looks like I needed to update my ignore list

But yeah thanks guys. The VP in the IT team wasn't on the call yesterday so my first step is to make it clear this is his responsibility as well. He needs to be arguing for a better support model from his IT pov, so it's not just me telling my boss I don't want to do it. My dotted line manager here in the UK (very normal, nice guy) has already mentioned to the IT VP's boss (CIO) that we're stretched too thin and this method of support is not fair. So I do have a few avenues to go down.


Salaried, no overtime, work outside business hours from time to time. The usual covering all bases.

Work phone. I actually dual SIM it and use it as my personal. Carrying two phones was tedious.

It seems - as far as I'm concerned - the vendor's SLA is fairly useless for this argument. We're talking about first point of contact when people can't login and currently that means we'll get hassled first.

Yeah. My main argument needs to be that this is a change in role, but I'm not seeing much wording in my contract that would support this. My contract does say "support the business with blah blah" but it doesn't suggest much with regards to hours.

Like I say, I'm pursuing via going around my boss's back to get the IT people to force this discussion. I do want to stay at the company, so dragging my boss to HR and causing a huge fuss is not going to be massively useful at this stage. I have mentioned it to my HR rep here and she fully supports me. But they're not doing anything yet.

Wait, you do out of hours work unpaid? Just to confirm. Or did you mean you do it not as overtime but it is paid at normal time 1.0 rate?
Even if it was the latter, I'd just stop answering calls and emails out of hours. If someone calls me or any of my colleagues after about 6pm - even 4pm to be honest - you are perfectly expected to not be able to get through to that individual or get a response until next day. Some people even work until 3pm and then log off due to working hour patterns they have arranged due to childcare etc.
If you keep responding, they will keep squeezing everything they can out of you. It all stops by just stopping the responses out of hours. If you get asked why you did not pick up an email or call, or they get funny with it because "you used to", go to HR. It's not unkind to put your business head on and stand up for number one, even if your boss is a nice guy. It's not throwing him under a bus by sorting out your right not to be hassled out of hours.

If you are doing this completely for free, then I feel sorry for you. Sorry that you have let it get to that. You need to have the confidence to not feel like you need the job so badly as to bow down to their ****. My wife has the same problem. Too nice. It's almost like bullying honestly. They are taking advantage. Stand up to it once and it goes away.

 

[sidimmu]

I think you should be putting the effort in tbh. I mean you probably earn more than 45k in a multi national.

This is some of the worst advice I have seen across this entire forum.
Whats the wage got to do with it? Nothing by the way is the answer.

Yeah. My main argument needs to be that this is a change in role, but I'm not seeing much wording in my contract that would support this. My contract does say "support the business with blah blah" but it doesn't suggest much with regards to hours.

Like I say, I'm pursuing via going around my boss's back to get the IT people to force this discussion. I do want to stay at the company, so dragging my boss to HR and causing a huge fuss is not going to be massively useful at this stage. I have mentioned it to my HR rep here and she fully supports me. But they're not doing anything yet.

Support the business blah blah yes, undertake actions not related to your current job role and responsibilities are completely different.

Frankly I dont think this is going to get resolved in the way you hope for. I suspect this will be in an identical fashion in 1 year from now.
Do you get an outrageous wage or benefits package from this employer?
If not, why no got look for another role, then you can give in your notice and the company and your boss will be forced to go fix the issue, yes its cost you your job and them an employee, but sometimes its the only way people will learn.

Taking it back to initial post, I would be speaking to HR about my working time and working hours, get these logged and confirmed over a period of time to show how much extra time you are working and what responsibilities should stop need additional resource/removing from you.

 

[dlockers]

The employee in question is not happy working their hours,

Itt Lad who supports system that is 24x7 is surprised they can't outsource support of the system

 

[sidimmu]

Itt Lad who supports system that is 24x7 is surprised they can't outsource support of the system

mixing threads because you dont like how we all proved you were wrong in the other, very mature mate.
Maybe trying to actually give us a logical response as to why he is in the wrong, rather than being very emotional because you lost in another thread and now wish to derail the users other threads.

Also, previous thread was not about working hours but working expectations within a probationary period. This thread is clearly about working outside of company hours without agreement and undertaking responsibilities not contracted, genuinely its best to read the thread before you comment.

 

[Scam]

This is some of the worst advice I have seen across this entire forum.
Whats the wage got to do with it? Nothing by the way is the answer.

He's just trolling and is now on my ignore list. I suggest you do the same so he doesn't successfully derail another thread.

Frankly I dont think this is going to get resolved in the way you hope for. I suspect this will be in an identical fashion in 1 year from now.

I suspect not, but it depends on what I can get our IT team to push for. If they can argue this is an "IT problem" rather than just a "business problem" to resolve we'd be getting somewhere. I am pretty fed up of my boss overall and am doing a lot of things at the moment to internally change roles and get me out of supporting this particular platform. (or any other). I finish a part-time course in March that the company paid for, that is training me towards that goal. But, I am as always at a disadvantage because my department is based in the US so making sure the "right" people know what I'm doing is hard.

Taking it back to initial post, I would be speaking to HR about my working time and working hours, get these logged and confirmed over a period of time to show how much extra time you are working and what responsibilities should stop need additional resource/removing from you.

Yep. My boss is such a muppet when we were arguing about it he was like "oh well if you want to log all of the out of hours stuff feel free"... The support distro goes to him as well so he knows full well how much we get on average. The bit that makes it hard to quantify is that sometimes there will be nothing say at the weekend, or sometimes there will be 6-12 emails. It really depends on what's going on in the business.

 

[sidimmu]

He's just trolling and is now on my ignore list. I suggest you do the same so he doesn't successfully derail another thread.

Added to my Krusty list.

I suspect not, but it depends on what I can get our IT team to push for. If they can argue this is an "IT problem" rather than just a "business problem" to resolve we'd be getting somewhere. I am pretty fed up of my boss overall and am doing a lot of things at the moment to internally change roles and get me out of supporting this particular platform. (or any other). I finish a part-time course in March that the company paid for, that is training me towards that goal. But, I am as always at a disadvantage because my department is based in the US so making sure the "right" people know what I'm doing is hard.

Right that is certainly a problem.
I would be doing the same thing, in terms of trying to move roles and get the responsibility out of my hair for the org to deal with, again it might end up you needing to leave for that to be fully understood.
Not saying this is the right way to be, but you cant expect everyone to understand it is a problem until their is no owner left for it.

Yep. My boss is such a muppet when we were arguing about it he was like "oh well if you want to log all of the out of hours stuff feel free"... The support distro goes to him as well so he knows full well how much we get on average. The bit that makes it hard to quantify is that sometimes there will be nothing say at the weekend, or sometimes there will be 6-12 emails. It really depends on what's going on in the business.

Yeah understand that, to get the working time regulations to sit on your side, you will need to show for a period of a couple of weeks where all the hours go but also how much time you spent working outside of working time hours.
if you signed a piece of paper at initial employment to not fall in line with these, you got to first put in a request for it to be applicable to you again before then doing the sentence before.
It will become a bit of a beast to record everything and timings done over the course of a couple of weeks, but if you are truly getting a bad deal due to the amount of time working, they wont have a leg to stand on if you give them true evidence.

 

[Quartz]

It does NOT mean call out at short notice.

You have my sympathies. Give them an inch and they'll take a mile. It sounds like you are dealing with American managers who are infamously psychopathic and ignorant of UK working practices and laws. I think you need to specify 'from time to time' with your manager; something like once per month unannounced. And you need to speak with someone external about constructive dismissal.

That said, I think you should also try to be constructive. You clearly work for a multinational so you can point out that your company's offices in America and Singapore (for examples) can cover issues that occur outside UK working hours.

 

[dowie]

Just don't answer every call and say you're busy when it's out of hours dude. The only reason they are calling you at the moment is because you're picking up.

This tbh... book some weekends away, take up some water sports whatever... they can't be running a *customer-facing* support role as some employees might be called at random 24/7 365.

Then when it becomes apparent that that's an issue they'll have to set up a rota and perhaps provide payments for out-of-hours/weekend on-call stuff... because, well you like going kayaking on the weekends or whatever but if you're now expected to stay at home and be able to access a computer within 5 minutes all weekend then that's cutting into your free time and should be compensated.

Wait, you do out of hours work unpaid? Just to confirm.

It's fine if occasional, quite normal in some industries for someone to maybe occasionally attend a meeting or take a call out or travel overseas out of hours.

I think the issue here is that this is like a more formal support/out-of-hours thing directly to customers and so OP should be compensated.

Like if he's first line for this system (even if that's a sort of side role for him) and the calls are frequent enough that it's becoming a pain then that should really be split among others and there should be a shift or on-call rota, it shouldn't just be random calls diverted to his mobile 24/7.

On the other hand, if something really bad has happened and others need to be called internally, like some developer or calling the relevant account manager for a client to let them know ASAP so it's not a surprise in their inbox the next day (and if it really needs it then even phoning the CEO at 3am)... none of those people should expect to be paid overtime or an on-call payment, good developers, account managers and execs already earn well into 6 figures (if not 7 or more figures in the case or execs).

I think the key things are that this is customer-facing so should be formalised not just ad-hoc and it seems like the frequency of calls are an issue now, very different to sometimes being called by a colleague or manager etc.

 

[jaybee]

Yeah. On call basically. This is typically paid at a lower rate say for example 0.5 time. Then if you have to do actual work you start claiming say 1.5 or 2.0 x overtime rate.

 

[Scam]

It sounds like you are dealing with American managers who are infamously psychopathic and ignorant of UK working practices and laws.

Indeed. Mine in particular. His argument is basically that he gets called all the time out of hours (which I don't doubt) but he actively encourages it.. for example telling people to call him any hour of the day and night. His work is his life, and not in a positive way.

I think the key things are that this is customer-facing so should be formalised not just ad-hoc and it seems like the frequency of calls are an issue now, very different to sometimes being called by a colleague or manager etc.

Yep exactly. Trying to make sure he/they understand my complaint is not out of hours work, as that is very much part of our industry (dealing with creatives, deadlines, technology etc.). Even down to simple things like replying quickly to that email at 9pm whilst sat in front of the telly.. because it'll save you waiting another 24hrs for a resolution/whatever. But as said, being technically "on call" is way different from this and he is just not understanding that.