Call out payments ?

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Discussion

J4CKO

Original Poster:

41,280 posts

199 months

Sunday 9th June 2019
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I have been asked if I would like to participate in a call out rota doing 4rd line Oracle DB support, day job is a SQL DBA but originally trained and certified on Oracle so should be fine with a bit of familiarisation.

Renumeration hasn't been mentioned but it will be paid, nobody does that for free or the joy of being woken up at 3am but not sure what the going rate is.

At the last place it was £100, so not worth the agro, remember years ago at another place it was £200 odd, just interested in what is typical if you dont mind saying.

I think it needs to be £250 to make it worth the restrictions on your spare time, as after tax/ni doesn't amount to much otherwise.


dirky dirk

3,009 posts

169 months

Sunday 9th June 2019
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It’s a difficult one isn’t it
You have to make it worth your while
Essentially you have to make sure your about, not had a lot of beer, etc etc and not in the middle something.

The trouble with it I would imagine is constantly picking your phone up and making sure you’ve got signal etc etc.

Do you get a further payment of called?

Olivera

7,065 posts

238 months

Sunday 9th June 2019
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I ain't done it for years, but would expect something reasonable like £100 for the week plus an additional hourly rate (e.g. £40) for each hour called out.

In addition I'd expect not to start work the next day until a set period after the callout finishes, e.g. finish callout at 3am, not expected online/in office until say 11/12.

If the above can't be met then I wouldn't do it.

Countdown

39,688 posts

195 months

Monday 10th June 2019
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It depends on a lot of factors. E.g.

- Is it just a single payment regardless of how many times you get called out
- Are there separate payments for standby and for actually being called out
- is it a fixed payment regardless of how long it takes to get fixed
- is travel time paid separately / incorporated into the allowance
- do you get TOIL to compensate

It also depends on how specialist your role is. E.g In a hospital an A&E Consultant is going to get a different call-out rate to the Electrician or the radiographer.

mr_spock

3,340 posts

214 months

Monday 10th June 2019
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Olivera said:
I ain't done it for years, but would expect something reasonable like £100 for the week plus an additional hourly rate (e.g. £40) for each hour called out.

In addition I'd expect not to start work the next day until a set period after the callout finishes, e.g. finish callout at 3am, not expected online/in office until say 11/12.

If the above can't be met then I wouldn't do it.
This. Also be careful of any other policy restrictions - must be within x hours of the office, what about after-call follow up (do you have to work a fault beyond your call our shift end), must carry laptop everywhere - make sure you get good mobile internet in that case - and so on.

J4CKO

Original Poster:

41,280 posts

199 months

Monday 10th June 2019
quotequote all
£100 after tax isnt worth the agro and limitations, probably £58 for not being able to go anywhere and having to think about it.

I dont think will be called often but need to be drilled and ready, so a certain amount of time each week to do a dry run as its easy to get complacent on call out rotas and see it as money for nothing, but need to be able to respond quickly, connect without issue and sort the problem.

I think it will be a flat rate and if you get called no more money which I am ok with but it has to be half decent to make the inconvenience worth while, will see what they say.

n3il123

2,601 posts

212 months

Monday 10th June 2019
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we had this a couple of years ago which may give you some idea... Link

RTaylor2208

178 posts

160 months

Monday 10th June 2019
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As a point of reference we get £300 (2 x 12 hour on call shifts) for a weekend but its more than oracle support including SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, Athena, Redshift, EMR, DynamoDB and Elasticsearch being the tech we support and pretty much any processes linked to operations, maintenance or ETL\ELT processing.

Black_S3

2,667 posts

187 months

Monday 10th June 2019
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Where I used to work it was

£30 per weeknight
£150 per weekend (Friday night - Monday morning)
+ over time in hour blocks at applicable rate if called out... once the hour block had been paid a second call out in that hour was seen as already paid for.

The allowances don’t seem like much but it was a pretty easy way to earn 10k+ extra a year.

J4CKO

Original Poster:

41,280 posts

199 months

Monday 10th June 2019
quotequote all
RTaylor2208 said:
As a point of reference we get £300 (2 x 12 hour on call shifts) for a weekend but its more than oracle support including SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, Athena, Redshift, EMR, DynamoDB and Elasticsearch being the tech we support and pretty much any processes linked to operations, maintenance or ETL\ELT processing.
Cheers, this is just one Oracle system, chance of being called is fairly low but if you are on call, you are on call I guess.

Dont want to take the pee, but I want to make sure its worthwhile, but above all want to provide a good service.


Black_S3 said:
Where I used to work it was

£30 per weeknight
£150 per weekend (Friday night - Monday morning)
+ over time in hour blocks at applicable rate if called out... once the hour block had been paid a second call out in that hour was seen as already paid for.

The allowances don’t seem like much but it was a pretty easy way to earn 10k+ extra a year.
Yeah, it adds up and would take a hell of a pay rise to match it.


n3il123 said:
we had this a couple of years ago which may give you some idea... Link
Cheers, some good info there.

Edited by J4CKO on Monday 10th June 22:42

J4CKO

Original Poster:

41,280 posts

199 months

Friday 22nd November 2019
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Been doing the call out for 2 months, all good apart from the fact the payment side seems impossible between departments and not seen a penny yet !


Chuffedmonkey

906 posts

105 months

Saturday 23rd November 2019
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J4CKO said:
Been doing the call out for 2 months, all good apart from the fact the payment side seems impossible between departments and not seen a penny yet !
Are you getting a basic rate for being on call?

For example we get roughly £200 for 7 days standby. Plus 1.5 hours per hour or x 2 hours on Sundays. I wouldn't do on call without that £200 standby allowance.

Being on call is a pain as for 1 week a month I have no life but it also earns on average about 5k a year.

KAgantua

3,848 posts

130 months

Sunday 24th November 2019
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Hey mate I'm in the same field as you odba and sql

Service manager as opposed to techy though

I get 200 of retention then it rate every time I'm called out

Pm me if u wanna talk

Sir Bagalot

6,463 posts

180 months

Sunday 24th November 2019
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When I ran a team with callout the structure was

£50 pd to be on callout 9am-5pm
If called then you got overtime which was 1.5x
Min overtime was 2 hours even if it was a simple 5 min call
If you had to go to office and didn't earn at least 4 hours ot then I'd pay travel time as well, otherwise you got mileage

it worked well. I think night on call would need a higher on call allowance

Truckosaurus

11,183 posts

283 months

Tuesday 26th November 2019
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The trick is to be on-call overnight so you are paid to sleep.

When I used to be regularly on-call I got paid for 6pm-8am and all day Saturday and Sunday, but a colleague supporting a different customer for the same product only got paid during the day at weekends, so he lost his weekend for a whole lot less money.

Call outs were very rare so you didn't have to worry about having to be up half the night fixing things on a school day.

Bujinkhal

75 posts

65 months

Tuesday 26th November 2019
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My on call is fairly crap.

3% uplift on salary.

£50 for each call out, though that's a 2 hour block. (even if the call was 5 mins)

One week in 7, 5.30pm - 8.30am and all weekend.

Having said I generally get around 10 calls a week so it's an easy extra £500 + the uplift.

vaud

50,287 posts

154 months

Tuesday 26th November 2019
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That doesn’t sound that crap!

Flooble

5,565 posts

99 months

Wednesday 27th November 2019
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vaud said:
That doesn’t sound that crap!
10 calls a week means probably broken sleep every night? If I had a team which was taking 10 out of hours calls per week I'd be seriously considering if (a) we had structural issues with the product/environment/whatever or (b) we needed an actual shift system.

It also sounds as though it might be £50 for the call but no overtime pay on top (so a four hour call is paid the same as a five minute one)

Apart from anything else, £500 per week on callouts plus 3% salary uplift for 7 (?) team members (so at least 21% of a salary) has to be a big cost to the company. Maybe not as much as running an extra shift, but you'd have to start thinking about it.

vaud

50,287 posts

154 months

Wednesday 27th November 2019
quotequote all
Flooble said:
10 calls a week means probably broken sleep every night? If I had a team which was taking 10 out of hours calls per week I'd be seriously considering if (a) we had structural issues with the product/environment/whatever or (b) we needed an actual shift system.

It also sounds as though it might be £50 for the call but no overtime pay on top (so a four hour call is paid the same as a five minute one)

Apart from anything else, £500 per week on callouts plus 3% salary uplift for 7 (?) team members (so at least 21% of a salary) has to be a big cost to the company. Maybe not as much as running an extra shift, but you'd have to start thinking about it.
Indeed, or offering some phased working patterns (late start / late finish) if staff wanted it (some might like it)

Bujinkhal

75 posts

65 months

Wednesday 27th November 2019
quotequote all
Flooble said:
10 calls a week means probably broken sleep every night? If I had a team which was taking 10 out of hours calls per week I'd be seriously considering if (a) we had structural issues with the product/environment/whatever or (b) we needed an actual shift system.

It also sounds as though it might be £50 for the call but no overtime pay on top (so a four hour call is paid the same as a five minute one)

Apart from anything else, £500 per week on callouts plus 3% salary uplift for 7 (?) team members (so at least 21% of a salary) has to be a big cost to the company. Maybe not as much as running an extra shift, but you'd have to start thinking about it.
Yes you're right, quite a lot of broken sleep and my longest call was 7.5 hours (£50) the rest taken as TOIL.

It has been costed vs extra shifts and it's just not worth it. 15.5 hours per night and another 63 at weekend totalling 125 hours per week.

No it's not structural issues, just a lot of users being covered (8000+) and they are allowed to call for pretty much anything. 24 hour service being provided by our users. I'm actually surprised we don't get a lot more calls.