On-Call Compensation (or lack of)

[NetworkEngineer]

Hello ladies and gents...

I left contracting over a year ago to enter a permanent job, as the contracting market in my sector was dying a slow, painful death.

I am classed as 'senior', whatever that may mean, pay 40% tax and earn £47k, and have recently been offered an on-call position within the business, which mainly deals with telecomms and networking for onshore business and oil companies.

They offer £500 standard for 7 days on-call; calls are expected to be responded to (preferably the customer called with brief explanation of why an outage exists) within about 30 minutes.

Having done two shifts of this as a trial, I feel the money is not enough. An 'hourly' rate is more administratively labourious, so I am going to initially ask for significantly more as a standard rate, eg: £900 or £1000 for the week, for example.

I earn double the salary of a junior, but we are currently both paid the £500 standard weekly rate; also not particularly fair.

I would appreciate if anybody has any advice, or has been in a similar situation, and can help with regards to 1) a modern appropriate sum of money to ask and 2) whether hourly payment in addition to the £500 payment is what I should ask for, or whether - in your experience - most companies just pay a flat one-off payment fee for being on-call.

It has gotten to the extent where I do not consider my current expenditure of time worth the £300 (after tax) that I am receiving.

Thank you in advance for any info or help

[PropertyCrashUK]

Can you clarify?

Will you continue to receive your 47K and this £500 for on call is on top of the 47K?

Is the £500 a permanent on call thing per week - i.e. you will be adding £500 per week to your 47K taking you up into the 70K a year bracket. Or will on call be just one week in four?

Or are you quitting your 47K job to go on call for £500 per week?

[NetworkEngineer]

Can you clarify?

Will you continue to receive your 47K and this £500 for on call is on top of the 47K?

Is the £500 a permanent on call thing per week - i.e. you will be adding £500 per week to your 47K taking you up into the 70K a year bracket. Or will on call be just one week in four?

Or are you quitting your 47K job to go on call for £500 per week?

Apologies for the confusion;

The permanent job will continue as normal, and they are asking us to participate in an on-call rota. Once every month, for one week (full 7 days) we will be paid, for that single week, an additional £500 onto our pay.

So, effectively, within the rota I will earn an extra £500 per month. I am finding that being forced to - essentially - have no 'life' and stay in for £300 after tax does not sound worthwhile to me, and I am asking what is a normalised value of money for being on-call in such a manner, particularly when getting called at any time, including through the night.

Thanks.

[Sockpuppet]

But maybe you've just had some bad on call scenarios. Are you always going to be called out?

[NetworkEngineer]

But maybe you've just had some bad on call scenarios. Are you always going to be called out?

I am only concerned with the money that appears in my bank account at the end of the month, not the pre-tax salary.

A 30 minute response time, that means the customer wants an actual verbal response as to the possible cause of the problem, basically says: stay at home for 7 days.

I work in a different city to that which I go to at weekends, so I travel every weekend. The weekend of the week I am 'on call' means I must therefore stay at home, in the city in which I work, basically not able to leave the house.

Keep in mind that whether someone earns £20,000 or £50,000 in my company, they are only paid the £500 pre-tax for being on-call for 7 days. That doesn't sound 'right' to me.

[Sockpuppet]

£500 sounds fine. The fact you're paying 40% tax isn't your employers problem.

[jmo21]

I've never done it myself, but I've heard other people having a base amount, plus something per callout (whether that is just another fixed amount, or hourly based I can't remember).

Do you have a work laptop? What about asking for them to provide that plus mobile broadband, then you could at least get around the being stuck in house part.

[Support Monkey]

I am finding that being forced to - essentially - have no 'life' Thanks.

If having a life is important tell em to jog on, i used to do call out 1 weekend in 4 and then some nights in the week and your correct you have no life and its a right pain in the arse, that week on call you can kiss goodbye to your normal routine even if you only get very few call outs your still sitting waiting you cannot just clear off down the pub and get legless, i would want more than £500 to make me do it again

[PropertyCrashUK]

I think you find that £500 is pretty poor when you compare to what lots of public sector workers such as engineers, social workers, etc get for being on call.

Your £500 is for a week - have a look at what their daily on call rates are.

[Support Monkey]

, i would want more than £500 to make me do it again

Scrub that! no amount of money is enough its not worth it all your gonna be doing is waiting for the phone to ring, if it was contract you could see the end of it but permie you could be doing it for years and don't forget when the monkey who is doing next week is on his holidays someone has to fill in for their week