On-call or working?

Serenity74

My place of work is introducing what they are saying is on-call but I'm not really clear, and nobody in management really seems able to explain, what makes it on-call rather than working.

We're being told its on-call as we don't have to come into the office which makes no sense as we're based around the country and a lot of us work 100% from home and rarely, if ever, go to the office - think I last went there about 3 years ago!

I've been googling and it seems the more restrictions that are in place the more likely it is to be working time and I'm not really reading anything to suggest to me what we're being expected to do is on-call but at what point does it tip from being one to the other?

We currently work 9-5 but our sales team have been selling contacts that provide 24/7/365 support. There is no mention to the customer that it will be on-call, emergencies only or anything different to what they experience if they call 9-5 at present. As they've been pushing the 24/7/365 offering, and of course massively discounting it to get customers, we've picked up a number of businesses who genuinely operate 24/7365 in the manufacturing & healthcare sectors among others so this definitely isn't a 'nobody will ever call' situation. 

From what we've been told we will be required to be contactable by phone at all times, if we miss a call we're expected to phone back within a matter of minutes and start work on whatever has been requested which could be anything from 'I've forgotten my password', 'the printer isn't working' or similar to the entire infrastructure has gone down. Potentially we will need to visit client sites, although how that will work with the geographical spread of clients and staff hasn't been clarified.

The requirements will basically mean you can't do anything with your time. When it was questioned what happens if you are going to the cinema, theatre or any other event the response was to take your laptop and phone with you. I can't imagine it going down well if you start taking calls at the cinema. 

Its looking like we'll be required to work either 1 in 4 or 1 in 6 weeks and it will be from 9am Monday morning to 9am the following Monday 24/7. In theory you could get a call at 2am that takes 4 hours but still be expected to be at your desk to work at 9am. 

Is this reasonable? it doesn't seem it to me, and some others aren't happy, but others seem to have no problem with it and say its like that everywhere. Although I haven't encountered anything like it in my 30 years in the industry. 

Our contracts opt us out of the maximum 48 hour working week but don't things like breaks between working days apply?

oh_really

You need to get a full and clear explanation of what is managements intention and plan to implement this, it will also help to have a written policy that can be referred to.
There should be clear demarcation between work time and on-call arrangements. 

Whats has been proposed sounds shoddy and ill conceived, at least from the employees perspective, ensure issues get clarified and sorted before commencing.

Are any of you in a trade union?

Serenity74

oh_really said:

You need to get a full and clear explanation of what is managements intention and plan to implement this, it will also help to have a written policy that can be referred to.
There should be clear demarcation between work time and on-call arrangements. 

Whats has been proposed sounds shoddy and ill conceived, at least from the employees perspective, ensure issues get clarified and sorted before commencing.

Are any of you in a trade union?

None of us are in a union unfortunately. Think its the type of job where its not something that's ever really crossed anyones mind.

Been asking for a month now, since this first came up, for something in writing but nothing is forthcoming. If you were suspicious you might suggest because they're on slightly shaky ground. 

From a client perspective their SLA is a response within 10 minutes and their contracts make no distinction between office hours and out of hours so they are expecting the same level of service if they call at 2am or 10am. 

oh_really

I suspect your employer will simply impose their will on the workforce and if there is any pushback, pick the staff off one at a time.
Good luck resolving without collective representation.

zagfles

Have a look at the ACAS guide to working hours https://www.acas.org.uk/working-hours

For example you are entitled to an uninterrupted 11 hours between working days, so if you finish work at 5pm, get called at 2am and work for 4 hours till 6am, you are entitled to your 11 hours off ie till at least 5pm (as you only got 9 hours off between 5pm and 2am). Even if you've opted out of the 48h week max, this applies.

Basically, if you're busy out of office hours covering it all oncall isn't going to work, they'll have to put a shift system in place. If say evenings are busy but overnight is quieter they could do two shifts eg covering 6am-10pm on shifts with 2 shifts 6am-2pm and 2pm to 10pm, and 10pm-6am oncall.

There's a bit of a grey area as to whether oncall is working time - it depends on what's expected, where you have to be, and restrictions on you. But it might not be to your advantage to have oncall time (ie the time when you're oncall but not called and actually working) treated at working time. We went through it with HR at our place when they thought oncall should be treated as working time, we all objected because it would have meant night shifts, when it's usually very quiet overnight, and would also have meant two shifts at weekends which would have ruined double the weekends.

Serenity74

oh_really said:

I suspect your employer will simply impose their will on the workforce and if there is any pushback, pick the staff off one at a time.
Good luck resolving without collective representation.

That's the problem I think. They got rid of around 50% of the customer facing staff using covid as an excuse despite us having more work than I've ever known with the inevitable result on the workload of those still employed. 

Unfortunately we have a lot of inexperienced young staff who have just accepted this change leaving a couple of us older, more experienced ones to ask the questions. As you say you risk being branded the troublemaker and, at best, have life made difficult, at worst, pushed out.

Thrugelmir

Serenity74 said:

oh_really said:

I suspect your employer will simply impose their will on the workforce and if there is any pushback, pick the staff off one at a time.
Good luck resolving without collective representation.

Unfortunately we have a lot of inexperienced young staff who have just accepted this change leaving a couple of us older, more experienced ones to ask the questions. As you say you risk being branded the troublemaker and, at best, have life made difficult, at worst, pushed out.

If the business is offering it's clients a service. Then the business needs to find a way of delivering same. Unfortunately the business will ultimately win. Employees are expendable. If someone doesn't wish to fulfill a role. There'll be somebody else who does. Companies don't have the time to micro manage every employees individual preferences. 

zagfles

Thrugelmir said:

Serenity74 said:

oh_really said:

I suspect your employer will simply impose their will on the workforce and if there is any pushback, pick the staff off one at a time.
Good luck resolving without collective representation.

Unfortunately we have a lot of inexperienced young staff who have just accepted this change leaving a couple of us older, more experienced ones to ask the questions. As you say you risk being branded the troublemaker and, at best, have life made difficult, at worst, pushed out.

If the business is offering it's clients a service. Then the business needs to find a way of delivering same. Unfortunately the business will ultimately win. Employees are expendable. If someone doesn't wish to fulfill a role. There'll be somebody else who does. Companies don't have the time to micro manage every employees individual preferences. 

No. But they need to obey the law.

Serenity74

zagfles said:

Have a look at the ACAS guide to working hours https://www.acas.org.uk/working-hours

For example you are entitled to an uninterrupted 11 hours between working days, so if you finish work at 5pm, get called at 2am and work for 4 hours till 6am, you are entitled to your 11 hours off ie till at least 5pm (as you only got 9 hours off between 5pm and 2am). Even if you've opted out of the 48h week max, this applies.

Basically, if you're busy out of office hours covering it all oncall isn't going to work, they'll have to put a shift system in place. If say evenings are busy but overnight is quieter they could do two shifts eg covering 6am-10pm on shifts with 2 shifts 6am-2pm and 2pm to 10pm, and 10pm-6am oncall.

There's a bit of a grey area as to whether oncall is working time - it depends on what's expected, where you have to be, and restrictions on you. But it might not be to your advantage to have oncall time (ie the time when you're oncall but not called and actually working) treated at working time. We went through it with HR at our place when they thought oncall should be treated as working time, we all objected because it would have meant night shifts, when it's usually very quiet overnight, and would also have meant two shifts at weekends which would have ruined double the weekends.

That's useful. So if they want us to start a 'normal' working day at 9am then we can't take any calls after 10pm. Which leaves a big hole in their 24 hour plan!

The volume of calls is a bit of an unknown as we'll be starting new customers who operate 24/7 but even with our existing customers, who at the moment don't have that cover, I can see a steady stream of calls being logged by our overflow service. Last weekend for example 12 calls including several after midnight. If those are the numbers when there is no out of hours service I can see calls being fairly frequent.

In terms of what you can and can't do while on-call their 'get out' seems to be they aren't restricting you as you can take your laptop and phone with you anywhere you go but in the real world that's not going to happen and as calls have to be responded to within 10 minutes its a pretty major restriction. 

oh_really

Serenity74 said:

In terms of what you can and can't do while on-call their 'get out' seems to be they aren't restricting you as you can take your laptop and phone with you anywhere you go but in the real world that's not going to happen and as calls have to be responded to within 10 minutes its a pretty major restriction. 

Who's phone and laptop, yours or the employers?

The employer does realise that many locations have shockingly poor reception, how do they propose to work with that?

I'd be viewing this as an organising opportunity and get joining a trade union now.

How much is the stand-by allowance to be and what payments will staff called out receive?

Serenity74

Thrugelmir said:

If the business is offering it's clients a service. Then the business needs to find a way of delivering same. Unfortunately the business will ultimately win. Employees are expendable. If someone doesn't wish to fulfill a role. There'll be somebody else who does. Companies don't have the time to micro manage every employees individual preferences. 

I've never worked at a company that's offered 24/7 cover before but I have worked at one that covered 6am - 2am and they ran 3 shifts to ensure all the hours were properly covered. To my mind if you want to offer 24/7 cover you should have enough staff working shifts to cover all those hours.

This seems to be something they've sold without really having the resources to deliver and instead are just pushing the work onto the existing staff on top of their current full time roles. 

But the impression I'm getting is that while its likely it wouldn't stand up if challenged legally in practical terms there's not much that can be done. As you say the power is with the employer.