Rewards for being on call 24/7 in Germany

[pootle 94]

Anyone here doing 24/7 on call support in germany.

 

I'm intrested in hearing what packages people are getting etc as we are looking to set up a 24/7 unit in my office, and we need some input. No financial needs to be passed, but info like

 

What rewards are you given for going on call, being called out, response times etc??

 

Any information greatfully received, and treated confidentally..

 

Pootle

[Keydeck 9,248]

I do on-call support for my company for a week every month or so. In return I am allowed to keep my job for a little while longer.

 

Hip hip hurra, alles ist super, alles ist wunderbar!!!

[MrRee 0]

I get paid €6 per hour for the inconvenience, then my hourly rate (I'm contracting) if I'm obliged to change my trousers quickly.

I was getting time-and-a-half in the UK... so this deal sucks. Upside is I never get called out. :ph34r:

[Jeeves 41]

I do on-call support as rarely as possible because the conditions are crap compared to the inconvenience of not being able to get pissed.

They pay some lowly fixed rate per 8-hour period (about €24), then normal hourly rates if I do get called.

Response time is having to be sitting in front of a PC working on the problem within half an hour.

 

Edit: Ha! Just seen that the previous response was to a three-year-old question. Doesn't change the facts though.

[CincyInDE 3,311]

Does anyone have any updates you'd like to share? I was told the other day that we will have to start thinking about this kind of crap since the company is going global and some customers are several timezones away in both directions.

 

The company currently does not have a policy, so this is the best (only) opportunity to get a favorable deal in place for schmucks like me.

[Guest]

For Germany, I've seen it's typical to pay a fixed rate per hour of standby. This is pretty good if you're not getting many calls and get to actually sleep those hours. If you get called every two hours, it's not really worth it at all. Then you get paid the regular rate per call-in time (worked time), except if it occurs on Sunday or on bank holidays.

In past jobs (different country), I was getting 10% of my regular hourly rate (I was still an employee, but the hourly rate was calculated from the salary) per hour of standby and 150% for call-in time, plus extras for weekend and bank holiday work. I remember working 4 hours on a Easter Sunday night - the pay was pretty sweet, something like equivalent of 14 regular work hours.

 

Being in IT, everything was done remotely, unless it was a disaster recovery exercise, case which required travelling abroad on short notice (24 hours). For regular on-call, the typical accepted response time was in the range of 20-30 minutes (from the time of the call till the time you picked up the ticket and started working on it).

 

My advice - if your salary is high, try to get a percentage of the salary instead of a fixed amount per standby hour. If possible - customer doesn't require it - try to avoid setting up oncall during the weekends, it effectively destroys your life for both weeks (the oncall one and the upcoming one). I pray for you not to get calls directly from the customers, but that there's a Helpdesk available 24x7 (or 24x5 or whatever) which tries to solve the issues and routes the calls. If you do have a Helpdesk, try to push as much of your potential work to them as possible - set up extensive documentation along the lines of "if this error happens, do that". You will spend a few good weeks writing it, but you will be grateful when you won't get woken up at 3 AM to restart a basic process.

[Biglaa 147]

Pah, I was told by my company that I was expected to be on call 24/7, with no compensation and not even a company phone!!!

[LeonG 14,850]

If you have a cell phone, it's not like you pay for incoming calls here so you don't need a company phone for them to call you. However, if you don't have a cell phone, you are not going to get called out very much unless you are home so in that case I am sure they will quickly give you a phone in order to be able to reach you.

 

I once had a job where I had started working normal hours and suddenly the workload changed and there was overtime and call-outs that it turned out my bosses did not plan on paying for, not even normal rates for the overtime. This resulted in me not taking their calls any more unless I happened to have nothing better to do and I also left as soon as I found something better.

 

Where I now work, there's a guy on call who is getting the overtime paid but nothing extra for being on call. He's even getting flack for coming in 1 minute late in the morning but he is expected to stay late, or come in evenings and weekends as needed when they call him.

[CincyInDE 3,311]

Thanks for the tips Airwave. I should have a meeting with the finance guy in the next week or two...I'm curious to see what he has in mind.