I work for an IT. Our company are trying to put together 24-7 support.

What do you think is reasonable compensation or pay for this work.

I work 8.30 to 17.30.
There would then be a separate company that would log any called that came in out of hours. I would then get a call / email from this company and have 1 hour to respond. This would be include weekends.

You need a standby payment first, this is for actually being available. I’d say around 40-50 quid a night.

Then you need to get a payment for being called out, the instant you answer the phone, you should be getting paid for disruption to your life. I would normally demand 3 hours pay.

If the work ends up being more than three hours, then it’s normal overtime rates after that. Being called out does not mean you lose your standby payment for the day.

edit: And standby payments and overtime should be higher for weekends and bank holidays. Don’t forget you’ll be expected to be on call christmas day and new years day.

we used to pay £4/hour for being on call and then double time with a minimum of 1 hour for receiving a call. You didn’t continue to get paid the £4 once you’d had a call until you’d finished and went back ‘on call’.

Do you need to be ‘at a computer’ or just ‘on the phone’ if you do get a call and need to call in within an hour – can make a big difference for days out etc.

Our field techies get £75 standby & £75 per call [2.1 hour av. call]

And don’t try to insist that people should be on call after they’ve stated that they’re on holiday. Mutter mutter.

Unless you need the money, don’t do it.

I would then get a call / email from this company and have 1 hour to respond.

Your life would disappear…

It depends a lot on how likely you are to be called and what is expected of you once you are called.

We get a flat £200/month, and are on call one week in six – from Monday evening to first thing next Monday morning. Time dealing with calls in in lieu or at standard overtime rate. Personally I’d rather not have the £200 and not have to worry about it, but in reality we hardly ever get a call and more often than not the expected outcome is that we’ll make sure someone is on site for first thing next working day. The only real concession I make to being on call is that I won’t be drinking more than a couple of beers on an on-call week so if I absolutely had to deal with a support issue or drive anywhere I could.

There is a big difference between that and, for example, friends who work for banks who when they’re on call will be expected to be in the office or VPNed in within 30 mins of a call at any time of day. That can really restrict your life (certainly means a ride of any length is out of the question), so are well paid for it and generally do just one evening a week plus a weekend day every few weeks.

I would have to be able to respond in a hour. Witch in reality means being able get on a pc connected to the internet with in an hour.

I am not keen, I agree it screws up your free time to much and the figures I have just been given, are very low.

I would have to be able to respond in a hour. Witch in reality means being able get on a pc connected to the internet with in an hour.

I am not keen, I agree it screws up your free time to much and the figures I have just been given, are very low.

Our place does laptops with 3G cards for the on-call staff so that you don’t have to be effectively grounded. But yeah, I opt out of the on-call rota. Not worth sacrificing quality of life for me.

I’ve worked at places where you’re on £2.50 an hour standby and then time and a half when you get called but for that you need to be working for at least 15 minutes I think it was before you can claim (so EVERY call was made to be at least 15 minutes long!).

Prefer my current way where you get a flat fee for a week night or a weekend day and then an hour at double time the second you answer the phone.

Cher. Ching.

Need to be online within 30 minutes but that doesn’t stop us doing anything really. I can go riding locally and be back within 30 minutes usually. Go shopping etc. Being on call is usually a good excuse to have a weekend at home and get some jobs done. And get paid to be doing it!

I haven’t been on call for some time but the above seems like a good guideline in terms of how to balance payment. We used to get a pretty generous compensation, something like (numbers are examples, I can’t remember the exact figures):

£50 per night standby money
£50 per callout
– More than 3 hours goes onto overtime at the normal rate
– You can receive multiple calls within that 3 hour period
– Additional calls (for unrelated incidents) after each 3 hour period pays and additional £50
Figures x1.5 for weekends and x2 for bank holidays with a day in lieu.

As for the actual amounts paid, that would depend on the pay grade of those going on call. IME as long as you manage it well there’s no need for your life to disappear, it can be quite profitable, and can also be a good learning experience (high pressure, no backup) especially for the young guns who are on that early learning curve.

There’s a difference between emergency on-call and being meithered to death. I’d say that “how likely am I likely to be called” is a pretty critical question.

Back when I was last on call, I probably got called about three times in six months. For that I got a “standby” payment for the week I was on call; can’t remember how much now, something like £150 I think. Nice money for the hardship of carrying a phone around with me.

If I was being called twice a night, every night, for a week, I’d have told them to shove it. We work too many hours in this country, and are too quick to do it for free. Bugger that.

how many staff, ie how many weekends would you have to do a month, days a week etc – or is it just you ???????????, if you’ve been up at 4 oclock in the morning for 2 hours do you need to do a normal day as well ???

I’m asking as you need to make sure your ‘life/work’ balance isn’t screwed.

Make sure that the call escalation process goes to senior management and that they MUST supply phone nos as well (you could be sick , on holiday etc etc).

? can you do via latest mobile device/phone and get company to pay all costs ?

Oh, good point made above too.

a) If you are not contractually forced to do this, do NOT sign a new contract which makes it so. This gives you the option to duck out if it’s taking over your life.

b) Sign up to a strict agreement on what constitutes a valid call out. I would want to see a clear description for what you’re expected to actually do some work for and what you’re expected to review over the phone and dismiss if you feel it’s not an emergency.

Typically you would have something along the lines of
More then ten users affected – valid
VIP user affected – Valid
Business critical service outage – valid

Single normal user affected – invalid
Non-service affecting outage – invalid

It would be unfair to permit call outs at 2 in the morning because someone with insomnia has locked their account out when they fancied doing a bit of work.

Also, emergencies which start during work hours don’t get handed over to the on-call staff as soon as the work day ends.

Typically you would have something along the lines of

I’d say,

Escalation call – valid. Anything else, not.

We are a small IT company. This would be for one of our customers, or potential customers we are in the bidding process. So volume is not known

I am the Snr Systems Engineer and have a few hats in the business but put simply I am the head of all things technical, next in line is the MD.

There would be 2 or 3 of us doing it at first. We could then try to back it out to a partner in a different time zone.

In a wider context, if your company are “trying to put together 24×7 support” they really need to think about the implications of that. What if two calls come in, 30 mins apart, and the first one will take you 2 hours to do? Do you have a skillset (or does the company have good enough documentation) that you can cover all likely calls? What, if any, escalation would you have for stuff you can’t deal with?

Escalation call – valid. Anything else, not.

Depends where he is in the heirarchy innit. A service desk operative can often buckle under pressure from shouty people. He needs to be able to tell someone unimportant but angry that they can do one confident in the knowledge he’s backed up by the agreement.

Looking at the OP’s last post though, the agreement is (should be) tied into his customers contract.

Miss ‘Spoon gets about £5k to be on call one week in four.

Doesn’t have to do anything, just answer the phone, check the caller has a service contract that covers out of hours suppourt, and that the need is actualy critical then phones the engineer on their behalf and get’s him/her to call the user back. No idea what the engineers get.

Usualy she gets about two to three calls a week, but sometimes (during a big event like the world cup or olympics for example) we’ll have a sleepless night as theres always someone somewhere transmitting live.

I would get c£50 per night.
Any hours spent answering calls are added to your flexi-time.

I would say the most important things is to agree some SLAs so everyone knows where they stand from the start because as people have mentioned you will get called for the most stupid things! Work out how often would you be on call (ie 1 week in 3 for us at the moment)
We can dial-in to our work PCs so realistically shouldn’t have to attend site but I live close enouh that it is probably easier for me to attend – again this would be for you to work out.

Oracle DBA for the Police here and we get £27ish per 12 hour session for us (they are trying to bring that down to £15 per session at the mo)………..a full week is 9 sessions (5 x week days and 4 x weekend) then overtime as per usual depending on day if we get called in.

We could then try to back it out to a partner in a different time zone

As I currently work in such an environment (although all our off shore is in house) I would think very very carefully about this. Even if you document for the rest of your life you can’t cover that basic little spark of initiative that’s just needed when stuff breaks.

The words ‘volume is not known’ would strike terror into my heart – I’d sign nothing till that’s pinned down.

NHS t&C here. Based on frequency of on-call, mine is 1 in 9. Thus 3% of salary as a retainer and then t1/2 or t2 per hour when called out. Although I rarely claim the hourly rate now as get called for less and less the higher up the tiers you go.

I work in IT and we have an on-call rota. It’s £2.75 per hour weekdays (6pm to 8am) and £3.50 an hour weekends (24 hours), as a standby payment. If we’re called then it’s O/T rate (1.5-2x normal hourly rate) paid in 1/2 hour increments. You need to be able to attend site or connect remotely within an hour and be in a fit state to work (it’s rare you’d actually need to go on-site though). We also have knowledge holders (rest of the team not on-call) who can be called if more help is needed but aren’t obliged to answer their phone (or even have it switched on – company supplies mobiles), they claim 1 hour O/T the instant they’re called if they answer (even if they just say “sorry can’t help” and put the phone down).

Might not sound a lot be we usually only get someone called out around 5 times a month so mostly it’s free money (although means your social life is a bit curtailed). 4 of my team are in the UK so it’s only 1 in 4 weeks you are on-call so not a big deal. I’ve actually pushed that the standby rate should be lowered and the people get more O/T when called but not everyone looks favourably on that :p

Our standby is (1.5 * hourly rate / 10) for weekday, (2 * hourly rate / 10) for weekends. Standby is 1.5 * hourly rate weekday and double pay for weekend for each hour.
Only allowed to standby for 1 system at a time – it depends upon the type of system as to whether you could have multiple calls for the same one.
Got a home laptop to dial in from – but then I don’t need to physically turn servers on / off I just tell the operations guys what to do (as an app’s not ops guy).

For a small business it forms part of a wider business context i.e. does your next bonus rely on a happy customer etc….

Spud, what do you get for being called ‘up’ but not ‘out’?

One of the reasons I no longer do my old team leader/deputy manager post is the on-call ridiculousness that goes with it, and the pisstake changes to on-call pay.

In the mental health areas of NHS, dealing with it over the phone, taking more ‘positive risks’ and not reinforcing the helplessness of the patient by going out are not rewarded financially at all. If you go out to give someone extra valium or admit them to a hospital bed (£300-700 per bed per night depending on the unit/ward) you do get paid. (believe me from experience it is far easier to do the bit you get paid for in this case than the bit you don’t get paid for…. 😕 )

If you’re a small company, will the clients get your direct on-call mobile number? (It happens…)

Speaking from experience – was an IT engineer in small IT company, who looked at 24/7 support – stay well clear of it, unless you’re legally forced.

Massive overheads, not enough staff to cover the rota efficiently – which required more staff to be recruited….