Late night call outs

theoretica

I was asked if I would do call out in return for toil and my response was along the lines of yes if really needed, but if you get me in to work for an hour in the middle of the night I will be genuinely tired and useless the whole of the next day so you will be losing a day of my productivity in addition to the hour of toil.

Unfortunately your husband has already been called and the boss knows how he is the next day, but could he do anything with lowered productivity?

Hard_Up_Hester

Hubby's mobile is not provided by the company & we can turn it off but they then phone the land line which we do not want to unplug as we have elderly relatives who could need help, plus we are back up carers for our daughter who is a foster carer and expecting twins.
Hubby has tried to speak to his line manager about this but he is 'too busy' to talk to hubby about it properly & just said 'There won't be many call outs, why are you complaining'.
Hubby has now emailed his concerns but hasn't had a reply yet.
Hester

maninthestreet

TOIL in return for the time spent responding to the call-outs isn't unreasonable. Presumably, your OH's email listed the number of call outs, and how many were 'false alarms' ??

notanewuser

Hard_Up_Hester wrote: »

He has worked for the company for 6 years, also it is difficult to be woken up at midnight, go to work for an hour or 2, come home & then get up at 5:30 to go to work.

There's a Working Time Directive issue here if he isn't getting his statutory 11 unbroken hours between shifts. What's he actually employed as?

MEM62

There seems to be a lot of debate on this thread about lost sleep, agreements with employers and overtime payments etc but nobody yet seems to have considered the most important issue.

The fact that companies expect their staff to respond to alarm activations never ceases to amaze me. My staff are NEVER required to respond to an alarm - I have an arrangement with a security company to do it.

I do this because, under H&S regulations, I have a duty of care to my staff. What is an alarm system for? It is to detect intruders and therefore if the alarm has been activated you must assume that your premises have been broken into and that there are some potentially nasty people on site. (OK, in many cases it is a false alarm but you cannot assume that!) By asking a staff member to attend I am asking them to go to our place of business and deal with an intruder. My guys are not trained to do that and I would thereby be placing them at serious risk of harm.

No risk assessment could justify placing staff in this situation and I am surprised that many employees either do not consider the risks they are agreeing to accept or have no concerns for their own safety.

Prothet_of_Doom

Personally I'd be ringing the boss, after i'd had a phone call, to explain, on of the following a) I'm too drunk to drive, b) in hospital with my mother who had a fall, c) Need him to authorise a taxi, as there are no buses or trains running, d) Your wife is at her mothers/on nights and there is nobody to look after the kids e) That you've had a phone call, you are on your way, and then phone him when you get there, phone him when it's sorted, and phone him when you get home, and take twice the time in lieu as it took.

tBagpuss_2

I agree that this is unreasonable.
Does your husband have the alarm company's details? If so, he could call them and ask them to remove his name from, the call out list.

Or next time, answer the phone, explain you are unable to come out and give them your bosses number.

I think hubby needs to put something in writing to his line manager and explain that he is not able to deal with late night call outs. (If it's nothing to complain about, why isn't line manager volunteering?)

Although it is not your husband's responsibility, it may be worth his while to look into whether there is a local security firm which can handle the call outs. We have recently done this (as we as owners have got fed up of going out in the middle of the night because a spider has crawled into the sensor) and it is not expensive.

Retrogamer

If it goes off on a night where you don't have work the next day politely refuse and say you've had some drinks and it wouldn't be responsible of you to go to work drunk

Takeaway_Addict

theoretica wrote: »

I was asked if I would do call out in return for toil and my response was along the lines of yes if really needed, but if you get me in to work for an hour in the middle of the night I will be genuinely tired and useless the whole of the next day so you will be losing a day of my productivity in addition to the hour of toil.

Unfortunately your husband has already been called and the boss knows how he is the next day, but could he do anything with lowered productivity?

How do you know this to be the case? I would be quite able to go in, sort the call out, go back for a few hours sleep and work normally the next day.

bap98189

MEM62 wrote: »

The fact that companies expect their staff to respond to alarm activations never ceases to amaze me. My staff are NEVER required to respond to an alarm - I have an arrangement with a security company to do it.

We do exactly the same thing. We employ a local security company to do the same thing. They have a set of keys, if the alarm goes off they respond and only if there is a real emergency would they call me or anyone else. If it just a false alarm they lock up and call us in the morning to let us know what happened.

It's not even expensive. OP I suggest you ask your employer to ring a few security companies and ask them about keyholding services. If the alarm doesn't go off it costs us less than £300 a year, which is a very small price to pay for employee safety.