On call for 30 hours?

Robert8x

Hi,

So I recently got my first IT job after finishing university. Due to the nature of the business we do 4x12 hour shifts a week, but every 1 in 5/6 weeks we do 3x12 hour shifts instead but have to be “on call” from Saturday 12.01am through until Sunday 7pm. We take home a work laptop and work phone for this period but we are free to do whatever we like in this time, but if a call comes through we have to be on the laptop within 30 minutes. I’m just wondering if we are allowed to be on call for this amount of time in one go? Surely in theory I could be called every hour while sleeping and never get any rest in that period (I know it’s unlikely but could technically happen). We get paid for our 12 hour shift that we missed from the week plus 8 hours overtime, but should be getting pay for the full period? I’m a bit annoyed as I knew it was 24/7 shift work but no where on the job description or during the interview did they mention on call, they only told me a week in to the job. 

This is my first full time job so sorry for all the questions!

Any help would be appreciated

Marcon

See https://www.acas.org.uk/rest-breaks/employees-on-call in particular the sentence I've put in bold:

On-call (or 'standby') employees are those expected to be available for work outside of their regular hours, sometimes at short notice.

The employee is entitled to the same breaks as everyone else if they need to be available for work during this time. For example, they're checking emails or responding to phone calls.

There are some jobs with different rules on rest breaks. The employee also might not be entitled to the legal rest breaks if they’re free to spend the on-call time as they choose.

onylon

Congrats on your first IT job!

They should have told you and as they arent paying for call outs you should prepare to be woken up at 3am because a vending machine in Madrid is out of Mars Bars and for some ungodly reason it sends an alert to the network monitoring system.

On the bright side you are only doing 1 day every 5/6 weeks as part of a larger shift pattern and you are getting paid for it so its really not a bad deal and I suspect it was a genuine oversight rather than your new employer trying to get one over on you.  Learn all you can in this role and in a years time you will have the skills and experience you need to start looking for something better (or maybe just better paid). When that time comes you will know to ask about shift patterns *and* on-call.

TELLIT01

When I worked in IT Support we were on call at weekend from midnight Friday until 8am Monday.  Paid handsomely for it but rarely called more than once over the weekend.  On the very rare occasions that a large number of calls were received we would contact our manager and they would try to get hold of somebody else to help.  If nobody was available they would prioritise the calls.  No way would we have been expected to work all weekend without sleep.

Savvy_Sue

TELLIT01 said:

When I worked in IT Support we were on call at weekend from midnight Friday until 8am Monday.  Paid handsomely for it but rarely called more than once over the weekend.  On the very rare occasions that a large number of calls were received we would contact our manager and they would try to get hold of somebody else to help.  If nobody was available they would prioritise the calls.  No way would we have been expected to work all weekend without sleep.

That sounds like a sensible solution, and I'd suggest the OP asks the 'what if?' questions now - not just "what happens if there are a lot of calls and I can't get any sleep?" but also "how do I escalate a call which is beyond my current competence?"

Dakta

Well done on getting into IT.

I do on call, we have to respond in 30 mins and we normally do a week at a time and it works out for each of us doing it roughly once a month. Its rewarded quite well so most here are keen to get on it - technically we could be manic but it's realistically quite quiet.

Obviously this will vary by role and organisation but your hours don't sound too unmanageable,  though work shouldn't come home all the time. 

TELLIT01

Being on call can be extremely lucrative, depending on the employer.  I was on-call one weekend and was asked in advance to accompany a telecomms engineer during major work to the company telephony network.  I wouldn't be doing any work, but they weren't allowed on site unaccompanied.  Work was supposed to take max 8 hours but actually ran over 2 days.  I was needed from 8 am to 10 pm on the first day and 8am to 8pm the next.  26 hours in total, basically sitting around reading books and being paid £35 per hour for doing so.  My missus wasnt happy until she heard how much I was earning.

Thrugelmir

Robert8x said:

 I’m just wondering if we are allowed to be on call for this amount of time in one go? Surely in theory I could be called every hour while sleeping and never get any rest in that period (I know it’s unlikely but could technically happen). 

The company will have set the rota on the basis of years of previous history. You are over thinking matters. 

dotchas

I don't work in IT but I do on call for the NHS. 24hrs at the weekends, we get about £20 for being on call and time and a half for each hour worked. So you are paid fairly well for being oncall from home. Oh and I have to be in the hospital in 30 minutes. 😄