Out of hours call rate

Jack Bauer999

Hi Guys,

Woundering if someone here can give me some help,

I currently work in IT, As part of my job i have to provide out of hours technical support.
i.e. P1 issues, server problems etc..
to a cuple of our clients i.e. 6pm - 9am weekday
and 24 hours sat and sunday.
There are only 4 of us doing this in the company. this is on top of our normal
9 -5 job and its rotated so we have to do it every four weeks.

At the moment we are having a mini dispute with the management, we
initially started out providing support to 2 clients, but now that number
is going up to 5 but the management are not willing to pay any extra for us taking the additonal 3 clients even though they are making a fortune seeing
as it dosent cost them anything extra to lump them on us. basically saying you carry the phone/laptop around anyway and get paid enough etc....

I woundering if anyone know any website, reports, links or info i can see to
compare our rate of pay with an average or something?? or anyone who
does this type of support themselves have advice?



Thanks in advance.

penexpers

Where I used to work it was 600 euro per week + 50 euro per hour called out. The number of clients went up gradually but the rate didn't.

Jack Bauer999

penexpers wrote:

Where I used to work it was 600 euro per week + 50 euro per hour called out. The number of clients went up gradually but the rate didn't.

thanks penexpers, we're getting pretty much the same but just pissed
off with managements attitude that becuase we have the phone/laptop
already then they can lump what they want on us without paying any
extra.

they claim that they have a meeting and we were one of the best paid
on call rate's in the country so not sure if we're justified or not in our
complaints.

penexpers

Well 600 euro a week is pretty good. In my current place it's about 250 a week I think. They could argue that as the rate of work goes up you're getting paid more (in terms of extra callouts).

Mr. Presentable

You could leave the laptop/phone at the office......:)

Do you have to do more hours outside of hours now? Is your workload increased?

Otherwise, what business is it of yours how many clients there are?

TheBigEvil

Unless its part of your contract that you have to do the support, why don't you and the other people doing it decide you wont do it anymore, unless the management put in a sliding scale based on the number of clients.

They really should increase the rate a little, to acknowledge the fact there is a greater risk of being called.

I used to do on call, but gave it up for similar reasons as yourself. The company loved making money off my back. Considering you are giving up your free time to do the on call, and are restricted for the week you do it, I'd give it up if they don't move on the issue.

homah_7ft

nipplenuts wrote:

You could leave the laptop/phone at the office......:)

Do you have to do more hours outside of hours now? Is your workload increased?

Otherwise, what business is it of yours how many clients there are?

I would imagine since you have the same number of people on call and a greater number of clients the probability of a call in any given period is increased. There is a solid argument for increasing the payments. It would surely be easy to demonstrate the increase in out of hours work calls.

Jack Bauer999

nipplenuts wrote:

You could leave the laptop/phone at the office......:)

Do you have to do more hours outside of hours now? Is your workload increased?

Otherwise, what business is it of yours how many clients there are?

well obviously if there are more clients there is more work load.

Jack Bauer999

TheBigEvil wrote:

Unless its part of your contract that you have to do the support, why don't you and the other people doing it decide you wont do it anymore, unless the management put in a sliding scale based on the number of clients.

They really should increase the rate a little, to acknowledge the fact there is a greater risk of being called.

I used to do on call, but gave it up for similar reasons as yourself. The company loved making money off my back. Considering you are giving up your free time to do the on call, and are restricted for the week you do it, I'd give it up if they don't move on the issue.

no its not part of my contract, its additonal work.
yes thats the same as us, it feels like we're being taken for a bit of
a ride, the company is making a fortune charging the clients yet we
are not seeing any of it.
we also dont get any extra for being on call bank holidays, christmas day,
new years eve etc...

Jack Bauer999

penexpers wrote:

Well 600 euro a week is pretty good. In my current place it's about 250 a week I think. They could argue that as the rate of work goes up you're getting paid more (in terms of extra callouts).

Yes the company is saying that exact point. but to be honest the main money is in carrying the phone around, the money
for getting calls is not that great when u take tax off it etc..

eg.. getting called at 4am and spening an hour fixing the problem and after
tax you get about about 30 quid for it.

TheBigEvil

Jack Bauer999 wrote:

Yes the company is saying that exact point. but to be honest the main money is in carrying the phone around, the money
for getting calls is not that great when u take tax off it etc..

eg.. getting called at 4am and spening an hour fixing the problem and after
tax you get about about 30 quid for it.

Sounds like its time to jack it in, unless you need the money. Thats the killer with the on-call, the tax. nearly 50% of your money gone on it, and to know the company is making a small fortune and not sharing it around with the people doing the on-call is a big kick in the nads too.

Eoin

Jack Bauer999 wrote:

thanks penexpers, we're getting pretty much the same but just pissed
off with managements attitude that becuase we have the phone/laptop
already then they can lump what they want on us without paying any
extra.

they claim that they have a meeting and we were one of the best paid
on call rate's in the country so not sure if we're justified or not in our
complaints.

€600 a week sounds an excellent rate. I get just under €300 per week for being on call, and that's 24 hours per day all week.

Jack Bauer999 wrote:

Yes the company is saying that exact point. but to be honest the main money is in carrying the phone around, the money
for getting calls is not that great when u take tax off it etc..

Then you should be questioning the call-out rate; that's what potentially effects you more with the new customers.

There's no logic in being paid more to be on call because there are new customers - you're either available or you're not. The difference is how many call-outs you get.

nesf

eoin_s wrote:

There's no logic in being paid more to be on call because there are new customers - you're either available or you're not. The difference is how many call-outs you get.

Agreed, if the OP was on a fixed amount for being on call I could see the problem but if it's paid per hour worked then I'm not sure what the problem is unless you are getting more calls that you can realistically handle. If there are more calls you get more money, if there are more customers you get more calls.

copacetic

eoin_s wrote:

There's no logic in being paid more to be on call because there are new customers - you're either available or you're not. The difference is how many call-outs you get.

well I guess his logic is that his company is bringing in cash for each customer that they add to the support list so why shouldn't the staff benefit?

I have a support contract like this and when I added a new system to the support contract I had to pay significantly more based on the support company having to pay their staff more to support another system and for the greater likelihood of a call/callout.

The principle is the same for the individual as the company, I'd expect to get paid more for every customer I am covering. Presumably each customer has a slightly different systems that you would have to be familiar with to support each of them?

From a customer point of view the rates required are ridiculous, a lot of money just to get the number and then if we ever call anyone out it costs a fortune as well (although this is very very unlikely to happen). I do know that the actual support people get a fraction of what I am paying.

nesf

copacetic wrote:

well I guess his logic is that his company is bringing in cash for each customer that they add to the support list so why shouldn't the staff benefit?

The staff see a benefit by earning more because they get more calls no? If it was a flat fee for being on call I'd completely agree with you, but if they get a per hour rate for calls taken doesn't that satisfy the whole staff benefit thing?

That and, just because a company makes a profit doesn't mean that the staff should be paid more necessarily.

Bulmers

I think the rate of €600 is very good, and then €50/hr...best on call rate i've ever heard anyway, and it's all remote work i take it, you dont have to travel to site, if so, i thikn that's very good.

It amounts to €7200/yr and then whatever hrs you get on top. I used to find on call useful for getting lieu days, build up the hrs, worth more to you as not taxed.

As for more customers, i've never heard of company increasing call rates the more business/likely hood of call there is, generally if get's hectic, put two on call or spread it to 1/5...

As for nothing special for bank hols etc, maybe hit them for double time hrs or day in lieu or something, that would be general industry standard

copacetic

nesf wrote:

The staff see a benefit by earning more because they get more calls no? If it was a flat fee for being on call I'd completely agree with you, but if they get a per hour rate for calls taken doesn't that satisfy the whole staff benefit thing?

That and, just because a company makes a profit doesn't mean that the staff should be paid more necessarily.

well, i'd agree, but I buy this service as insurance really, not because it will actually get used. Getting more calls would mean the system was installed badly (in my case we have very technical internal support, the external is just a backup to this). If I was the support person I would want a proportional increase in payment with the company. In the last 2 years we have made ~15 out of hours calls and had an onsite visit 3 times. Notably each time the support person didn't have a clue what had gone wrong!

nesf

copacetic wrote:

well, i'd agree, but I buy this service as insurance really, not because it will actually get used. Getting more calls would mean the system was installed badly (in my case we have very technical internal support, the external is just a backup to this). If I was the support person I would want a proportional increase in payment with the company. In the last 2 years we have made ~15 out of hours calls and had an onsite visit 3 times. Notably each time the support person didn't have a clue what had gone wrong!

More customers make it more likely that there will be calls raising what the employees can expect to earn from being on-call. That and the externals aren't "back-ups" really in a lot of companies that don't have enough work to justify having full time IT staff in specific roles or whatever.

Eoin

copacetic wrote:

well I guess his logic is that his company is bringing in cash for each customer that they add to the support list so why shouldn't the staff benefit?

I have a support contract like this and when I added a new system to the support contract I had to pay significantly more based on the support company having to pay their staff more to support another system and for the greater likelihood of a call/callout.

The principle is the same for the individual as the company, I'd expect to get paid more for every customer I am covering. Presumably each customer has a slightly different systems that you would have to be familiar with to support each of them?

From a customer point of view the rates required are ridiculous, a lot of money just to get the number and then if we ever call anyone out it costs a fortune as well (although this is very very unlikely to happen). I do know that the actual support people get a fraction of what I am paying.

The point is that he will get paid more if he gets more call outs.

The amount of systems that he is supporting does not impact how long he is on call for - and he is already getting a very good rate for that.

The amount of systems however may impact how many call outs he gets, and as he is paid more call out, then he is getting paid more. If he does not get many more call outs, then he doesn't deserve more cash.

I do agree that his call out rate is quite low however, and I recommended that this is what should be looked at. Having said that, I get half of his on call rate, and am on call for longer. I would prefer to have the guaranteed higher on call rate, and a lower call out rate then the opposite way around.

There seems to be some confusion here about when you should get paid more for what. If he and his team are adding a lot of value to the company, then salary reviews and/or bonuses are the place to handle it.

The value, or lack thereof, of the support contract has absolutely nothing to do with it at all.

So far, it smacks of the dart drivers looking for more money because they have to drive more carriages, despite it making much difference to their actual work load.

upsfan

A general rule of thumb that I have heard for "on call" is 10% of your overtime rate for each hour you are on call. So if you are on call overnight, e.g. 16 hours, you should be getting 1.6 hours overtime pay. On call over a weekend, e.g. 64 hours (48+16), you should be getting 6.4 hours at your overtime rate.

This is all before you are actually called. If you are actually called out, this is suspended and you get your overtime instead. Many contracts have a minimum period for this, e.g. two or three hours, so you get woken up at 4am to fix something that takes you ten minutes, you still get paid for two or three hours at your overtime rate.

michaelanthony

My place is 1152 a week for being on call with more if the phone rings.

Eoin

michaelanthony wrote:

My place is 1152 a week for being on call with more if the phone rings.

Are you serious? That's crazy money - how often are you on call for?

michaelanthony

about 1 in 6 weeks.

Bulmers

wow, what's that on call for?

michaelanthony

Unix and DB support.