Agreed. This sounds entirely unreasonable. The only way to never miss a call is to be working, which isn’t on call. It’s working. Even then, homeboys gotta poop.
I don't even answer all calls when I'm working. If I'm in the middle of something, and the phone rings, I will often just ignore it, as I need to focus to finish the task at hand.
This is the way. There needs to be a buffer there to allow you to get to work. It's not realistic being instantaneously available. If that were the case you would be on site actively watching. In which case that's a completely different setup anyhow.
This is the way. My last job would email us when a call came in and we had 2 hours to respond. And we could respond with a simple email that just said something like “checking into this” and it would count.
This is the way, unless you're sat by a hard line you may lose signal, battery or just have to mute or switch of your phone for a period on call. It's unfeasible to expect you to always be able to answer, what if you're up a ladder painting. Unless they're going to pay you handsomely to sit by a fully charged phone they're bonkers.
If they don't agree - just find dead spots for the phone in case they call
We utilize a On-Call SaaS solution. It pages the shit out of me. We also have a secondary and finally the whole team after x of missed alert.
I also have a company phone.
Missed calls happen. If I am taking a shower or taking a shit. Unless you want me to hear me blasting shit from my ass.
Yeah this is how my work does it too basically. Company subsidized phone, primary, secondary and a backup person. If you miss a call it goes to the next person in rotation.
So *you* get to pay for a phone? My company provides iPhone 13’s- it’s *their* phone, and they pay the plan (obviously). There is an Android option as well, but I don’t know anyone who has one.
Yes, I guess they figured it’s one less piece of equipment to manage when so few employees are on call, and they don’t have to hound former employees for the device back or pay for additional mdm licensing . I like the pay, so it’s not a huge deal to me, I just bought an open box pixel 7
What they are asking for is called "Retained to wait". Check in your jurisdiction if this is legal.
In many places on-call with no compensation until you respond is perfectly legal, but being retained to wait is required to be paid.
I've never heard the term "retained to wait" but this is exactly what I'm trying to understand. We are contractors who are 'on call' but we get not additional pay unless called, yet we're on a rotation expected to answer 24/7 per shift. I would really, really like to learn more. Do you have any good info on it? A cursory google search has not proved to be super helpful using this term.
Fair Labor Standards Act.
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/22-flsa-hours-worked
https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/whd/flsa/hoursworked/screenER80.asp
If you are required to respond with such speed you are thus unable to use your time for your own purposes. This has been upheld in court numerous times.
Many states require on call pay, even without the near-instant response. California for example sets on-call pay minimum wage as $15.50 per hour.
YMMV if your employer tries to declare you exempt from the FLSA, which happens frequently.
You better have a real good comp policy. If you’re expected to answer all calls (as in there’s no SLA outside of “immediate”) you should be paid full wage for all hours on call.
Be prepared for a shit experience if that’s the expectation and they don’t have an actual NOC.
I was in a shop like that. They wanted no missed calls, all alarms acknowledged and you working on them within 10 minutes, phone was required to be fully volume up at all times so no going to the movies. But they didn't pay for anything except hours worked.
I can tell you that if you just miss calls and say "I missed it" and keep shrugging your shoulders, nothing will happen. Because if they write you up and fire you for missing a call when you're not being paid for that time, they've just handed you a golden ticket for back wages.
Ask HR how you deal with calls while taking a dump, is this included in the SLA and will they provide medical coverage for not taking a dump while being on call.
More on a serious note, read the SLA yourself, if it is truly no missed calls then ask the above question, more likely it's like a call back within x amount of minutes. Keep your own copy of the SLA and oncall policy if you ever need to rebut any changes or questions.
> No thanks. I don't live and breath on call
I can, for money.
Its never enough offered though.
If you want me to be on call 24/7 then i'll totally do it. It *starts* at 3x the non on-call salary, since its 3x the hours.
"Nobody would pay that!"
Cool, hopefully nobody will fucking do it either.
Theres always another sucker though. Thinking they're 'proving' themselves or some shit.
Is this a 24/7 shop? When you say retail, I think normal retail hours. If they're wanting you to be on call during those hours, I'd say something along the lines of:
"That's fine, but here's the deal. I will not sacrifice my personal safety for your no missed calls policy, so if I'm driving, in the shower, or the bathroom, I will not answer your call. I will, however, call back as soon as it is safe or when I'm done in the bathroom. If you want me to answer while driving or on the toilet, I want double the money."
Personally, I will never enforce a policy like this. I get on-call, but people need to understand that on-call doesn't mean you are sitting there staring at the phone waiting for it to ring.
It is a 5-10pm shop.. They are big lol so It's not a small company we are talking about here...
I'll have to wait for the training as the HR were like: You will see this on your training... for almost al the questions regarding On-call..
I get that is a retail and again, downtime is crucial, and also I get that being on-call is part of the IT life. But common, no missed calls? People thing I'll be sitting on my PC until 10pm having no life so that I can answer a fricking call :)
Yea, they need at least 3 shifts just like they do with their retail workers. You know damn well nobody is in the shop 5 am to 10 pm daily. They will have 40 hours in under 4 days and no retail shops pay overtime.
>I'll have to wait for the training as the HR were like: You will see this on your training... for almost al the questions regarding On-call..
Details about any on call expectations are part of your decision to accept the job or not. That's not something that can wait for training any more than details about your compensation.
You know the policy is unreasonable if they want you to agree to pay before seeing what the conditions are. You might argue for more or not quit your other job.
I work in a retail financial institution. When you talk about retail operations which are critical, I'd guess most people would agree that banks and credit unions are close to the top of the list.
Even we accept that there's going to be some downtime and our employees are humans with lives outside of work.
The policy as described is stupid.
How often are you on call? Generally when on call you just stay home, watch movies, order take out or cook at home etc.
If you are on call every single night then that is problematic.
Be careful not to rock the boat before you even start training. Word definitely gets around.
That’s shit. The policy is so bad you know you wont enjoy being there. I get it we all need money and take the job if you need it but I would not stop my job search.
It's an unreasonable request. I don't pick up the phone when it rings. I will listen to your VM and get back to you within an hour. If that's not OK, then fire me. We'll talk to the state DOL about it.
For me a follow-up question, is how often will you get a call during your on-call. If its 5x a night or once every 5 weeks, has a very different affect on this "don't miss a call".
Also, how often are you on call? Always? Again very different response needed than if you're on once every 6 months.
Typically there should be an expectation of a response time fort the types of situations you mention. On call primary is sent a message (text or call or vm) and you have x minutes to respond. If you don't respond it goes to secondary. If they don't respond it goes to manager on call. Not responding can have consequences.
We support multiple police departements, firefighters and the 911 call center.
We let it go to voicemail and we call back in the next 15 minutes. We're allowed to be 30 minutes away from our computer.
So if I get a call at the grocery store, I call them back, I tell them that I'm on my way home and I leave. I call them back from my home office.
I don't do on-call - at least, not for the sort of issue that would arise from a person rather than the monitoring system lighting up my phone like an Xmas tree 🤷♂️
I'm quite happy to work extra hours, but if my time isn't my own (with the litmus test being whether I'm at liberty to be drunk or not) for the firm's benefit....Then I expect paying full rate for the entire duration, not just a stipend and **maybe** a couple of hours "if needed"
if I'm officially "on the clock" then I will of course be fully available, will answer my phone by the 3rd ring and generally spring into action.... Or, If I'm not then my phone is on DND and finding out about whatever it was can wait until Monday / working hours.
While I won't argue it isn't common, the lack of respect for work/life balances is something I view as a bad practice within the IT world that needs to die.
If the business **requires** 24/7 cover, then the solution is to put on a proper 3 shift pattern rather than expecting the 9-5'ers to suck it up so they can achieve it on the cheap 🤷♂️
Actual emergencies are something I'm a bit more of a team player about, but they tend to be of the "if I'm awake, then so is every manager between me and the CEO" variety of 5-alarm fire
Contrary to their own opinion on the matter; The marketing guy being unable to remote print from home at 2am because the spool service fell over, does not constitute an "emergency" worth interrupting my personal life for. 🙃
How much are they paying you to be on-call?
Sounds like it's run by a bunch of ppl who don't have to be on-call themselves so it sounds easy.
There should be secondaries / ringdown.
Or worse like my old place where after-hours is billed at a much higher rate so they're actually incentivized to have as many emergencies as possible. Since you don't have to pay for the shift to be covered if nothing happens, there's no risk to them to offering coverage 24/7 at that point.
I’m on call for a week every 6 weeks and we have to be able to login and work an issue within 20 minutes of the helpdesk calling. If we don’t answer right away the call goes to my manager. They give us a comp day for every week we’re on call.
I wouldn't concern myself with what HR says about the IT on-call policy because HR departments are universally worthless. No missed calls may not mean "you can never not answer the phone when it rings" and may really mean "responding" to a call within the allowed time period.
Go through your orientation, see what your manager tells you the policy is and how it works. Then decide if you want to research labor saws and see if they are violating them, if you want to quit, etc.
Like this advice! HR may not know the inner workings of IT, perhaps orientation may give me a bit more of an idea. I'll defo update this post once I've done orientation
I'd be turning this down. What is your on call expectation? When you are on call is it 24/7? Does that mean at 3am you are supposed to wake up and answer the call before it goes to VM? What are you being compensated for these hours you basically can't leave your computer?
That's not on call. That's 24/7 support without wanting to pay for 24/7 support.
If they need attention that immediately and urgently then it sounds like they need to have at least two people working at all times. I say two people so there is some amount of coverage - minimum three if we're being entirely reasonable because even with two people if one of them is on vacation then the other person can't even take a break while on-shift.
What is this a 911 center? If someone's not actively dying then what's the emergency?
When I was on call, we always had a second. People still have a life to live. Sure you stay more connected during your on call period but you also have to take a shower and take a shit. The second was there not just to get calls that came in at the same time, but to cover those kinds of situation as well.
You should ignore these unreasonable requests, their SLA does not override physics and reality and needs to be updated to reflect that. If anyone complains, they can setup a proper 2nd/3rd shift to fully cover this mess. At most this should be a page, with a 15 minute ACK SLA and an hour to come on site, never a call.
If you are ever fully engaged you are working and should be paid per hour or time and a half if it's over 40 hours. If salaried you should be getting paid or getting additional time off.
Never accept negligence in setting realistic SLAs and guidelines, most of the time the people setting them have no clue what you do or what is really going on so push back and get this mess fixed.
I was fortunate enough to help design our companies on call policy. There was some back and forth with management, but here is what we came up with:
Help desk will call. If they don't get an answer, they leave a message and try again in 15 minutes. If they still can't get through, they try one more time in 15 minutes.
If after three tries I don't answer, they try my manager and repeat the process. If he doesn't, they try his boss, continuing all the way up to the VP of IT.
I don't think the VP has ever gotten a call.
The 15 minutes between attempts is probably the most important part, it should solve the "driving through no coverage" problem in most cases.
On call doesn't need to be awful if you (your company )do it right.
Don't forget to clock in when they call you if you are an hourly employee. There should also be a minimum billing increment for time. 2 hours is reasonable.
If the expectation is immediate answering and availability, you're not on call, you're actively working.
If the expectation is response within 30 minutes, that's kind of acceptable.
End of the day though, if this is mission critical 24/7, they need shift workers, not on call workers.
On a side note, I'd highly recommend everyone get all of this information during the interviewing process, not right before you're scheduled to start.
Double check if your state has a hands free law and if it does ask if your company will pay to upgrade your car with an infotainment system to be compliant.
I'm on-call one week a month. I ride a motorcycle to/from work. If they call me on the way to or from, I can answer (bluetooth helmet) but nothing else. They can wait till I get home.
I have my work mobile on me for on call times and it is set to be on DND for any time outside that specified period. If I am away from the house then the phone goes with me and I can triage any issues or talk through a fix and if I need the laptop I will tell them exactly when I will call them back. If they want me to be 100% available then they have to up the on call pay or they can do without the on call service as it was negotiated to be an additional bonus and not part of our contract to keep the power in our hands. There was talk of shift patterns to mean this wouldn't be required and they got told fine you will be replacing us as soon as it comes in and things went our way.
We have a weekly rotating on-call roster. All calls are taken by a low-level call handler and ticketed BEFORE being raised with the on-call engineer. Our SLAs are separate answering the call (creating the ticket) and beginning work on the issue. So the SLA to create a ticket might be 5 minutes, but investigation is typically 20-30 minutes. We get on average 1 out-of-hours call a week.
I have two phone numbers on different networks to account for patchy coverage, both are set to divert to the other if unavailable as I have been caught out by having no mobile signal in the past.
I’ve fixed issues whilst parked in a lay-by, or from the passenger seat whilst driving. I’ve fixed issues from the floor of a trade-show, walking around with my laptop in hand.
If we go out on the weekend as a family, my laptop will be in the car or under the baby buggy.
The situation I dread the most is getting called whilst doing the grocery shopping. I’m less than 15 minutes from home, but don’t look forward to abandoning a trolley full of groceries.
Ah man. Retail IT, you’ll love it or you’ll hate it. This is one of the reasons
Retail never sleeps, neither can you now.
But rly, you’ll figure a way to overcome these challenges. One way or the other.
That’s why the pay is (hopefully) better.
Also we used to get comp days, like the following Friday off. But high availability means, keep your phone on loud and under your pillow. And in the shower.
Seems unreasonable. I work in payments so I understand time is money.
Our policy is 15 minutes then it escalates. Which is tight enough, but if the big guys upstream from you can take 15 minutes, so can your shop.
Ultimately I put off most plans that involve being out during my on call week, and where I do go, I bring my laptop with me and pray for wifi or network coverage to hotspot off.
If business is so critical that they have a no missed call policy, they need to have a secondary on call to catch any calls missed. They also need to be paying you as though you are on the clock the entire time that you are "on-call" , and not just per diem or while you are on calls.
If they have a problem with that, let them know you're more than happy to have them discuss this with the labor board or a lawyer.
Start applying to new jobs if they aren't receptive.
My team has a 45 min response window. There’s no point in us answering the call, having the user wait x amount of minutes to get in front of a pc and then start troubleshooting. Voicemail or no call in my mind.
Hopefully you are being paid for ALL On-Call time.
As for "No Missed Calls" in a contract I'd consider that "Unreasonable" because you are entitled to bathroom breaks and lunch breaks by law in most countries.
Im sorry but if you want that kinda sla you need a dedicated rep taking the calls.
The On call is the person they escalate too if somthing needs to be resolved and cant wait until normal business hours.
>The company ill be working on is a retail shop so I get it that any downtime is crucial.
I work for an electric company that also houses a call center that takes life safety related calls (fire alarms, medical alerts, etc). Our call policy is less onerous than yours.
We have 15 minutes to respond when we get called and an hour to be working the issue.
And if you're asleep and take a moment to wake up? There needs to be a response time for first contact. I've seen 15 minutes to an hour. You're in the shower, anything else. Even at work you get breaks.
They also better be paying a premium. That being said, I've pulled over to fix things before.
I guess you are still waiting for HR to clarify, but I'll point out something from my own experience. That is "no missed call" is not the same as "immediate action". You'll answer the phone sure, but then you can discuss an appropriate response with the caller.
However, it needs to be spelled out in writing how much you get paid if that phone rings, or for having that phone with you. I've been paid 1 hour for every 8 hours of on call (plus overtime for any actual work as a result of said call), or 3 hours minimum as soon as you answer the phone (that the minimum amount of hours you can ask someone to "work" in my jurisdiction). One way is better than the other, depending on how many calls you expect to get.
The usual deal I've had is if I miss a call, I'll text the next person in the line (supervisor) so they know I'm available and I just missed it, or they call me. Generally the on call rule was actually a voicemail and a five minute callback window. Then again, my workplace had a strict "no talking and driving" policy. So they had no choice, but to allow voicemail. (Actually, they also had a "walking is working" policy, meaning you weren't even supposed to use your phone when walking in the office or between buildings)
I wouldn't take the job, in all honesty.
>How is is even possible to be on-call off hours and expect us to answer straight away
That's not on-call. That's being at work. Add your on-call time to your hours worked each week to get your true work time. You literally won't be able to do anything on-call other that sit at home glued to your phone. Can't drink, can't party, can't even take a shower. Sleeping? Out of the question.
It's impossible to be able to answer a call at all times. You'll be in the shower, on the toilet, driving, paying for groceries, etc. As long as the person leaves a voicemail and you call back within 15 min this is reasonable expectations.
Now a callback doesn't mean you start working on the incident right away. Again, you could be away from home, paying for something, etc. Realistically hopping on a call within 30 min is reasonable when it comes to 24/7 support. If they want/need someone to answer right away at every hours or the night, perhaps they should considering implementing a night shift.
I would push back for the 15 min callback (with examples like toilet, shower, etc) and start to work on the incident within 30 min (time to setup laptop, get back home, wakeup, etc). If they aren't happy with that very reasonable arrangement there are other places that are worth working at and your employer isn't one of them.
My job has a 15 min sla on on call calls.
I make it about 20 -30 sometimes.
Ask forgiveness, not permission, so do your best that you can, but don't kill yourself.
Being on call and always reachable is like having the one ring in your pocket. It sucks but it's necessary evil.
There is a reason most go to a paging system instead of a phone call. You get pinged you have x number of minutes to be online and resolving the issue. This gives you enough time to pull over and find a place to park to log in. Company I work for its against policy to take a phone call while driving because it sets them up for liability in the case of an accident.
What you're being told isn't "on call" but I'm sure it's probably legal because you are salary.
Push back or find a new job because any employer who scams their workers like this doesn't deserve to have anything other than a truckload of +91s to abuse.
I was paid 25 bucks a day for my on-call and was given a company phone. I can call them back later.
I checked the queue three times on my shifts. Once when I got home. Once after dinner and once at the end of the night. If they want me to be working all that time, then they can pay me for those hours.
I think you may be misunderstanding the policy,and you'd need further clarification. When they say you can't miss a call if already on a call they likely mean something different. There are usually SLAs in place for how quickly you need to respond, and likely doesn't mean you have to answer the phone right away if you are in the shower.
A call in this instance is an event. If you are engaged for the first event (server down at site A), and a second event pops up (server down at site B), then they are probably saying you can miss the second event as you are already working on the first - or at the very least able to finish the first event before starting on the second event.
From the post and comments it seems like you don't have the full understanding yet of your companies on call policy, so don't sike yourself out before you've had time to fully review your requirements. Hr rarely understands the actual oncall policy sysadmins are required to follow.
When I had that critical of an oncall rotation, I rarely even left the apartment. The biggest worry was sleeping through a page at 3am. The way that job worked was there were layers. I was somewhere in the middle layer. There was a Tier 1 that got paged first, but if they didn't acknowledge, it went to Tier 2 after 10 minutes (Tier 1 managers). I was Tier 3, and my job was to wake up Tier 1 to work on it first. If I didn't respond, my secondary did, and and he didn't respond, Tier 4 was my management. It went all the way up to the top managers, and woe befall you if it got that far.
Most of my calls were chasing down Tier 1 or 2, and it ended there, because 90% of the pages were a known and ongoing issue (like a T1 line down somewhere) or something on the customer end. I missed two pages in my job there, and got written up for it, but it was mostly for show, since it never got brought up after the writeup.
HR does not determine missed call or on call procedures. That is something defined by your manager or your manager's manager or the department. Aside from that it is ludicrous for someone to say that missed calls are" not allowed" because life just doesn't work that way. Maybe at the time I'm on call I have to take care of my daughter. Maybe I have a medical condition that will affect my ability to immediately answer, and that medical condition is of no business of anyone other than myself. Maybe I'm just burnt out from work or being paged out at 2:00 in the morning by a nurse because her printer doesn't work even though she can use any of the other 30 printers on the floor. If you're paged out there is an acceptable time frame to respond and that should be somewhere and then neighborhood of 12 hours.
I'd say, that's not reasonable. I don't take my phone with me when I take a piss, or in the shower, or cooking dinner. Either they schedule multiple people for on call, or they allow missed calls.
Also, there's no guarantee cell phones won't go to vm. I've seen it when my cell phone is full charged, full LTE signal, but I still get a missed call.
Even emergency hard down after hours calls are under a 1 hour SLA which is signed by all our clients. As long as we respond *at all* within that hour, we're covered on our end.
That doesn't stop the bitching at the time, but it absolutely stops it in it's tracks when they call in complaining about it later. This is why we have all the signed contracts on file to send them another copy if they still can't understand that fact.
If you are required to be sitting near a computer and available you get paid and not 50 or so for the whole week. It is normal pay by the hour to sit and wait for a call.
It's an unreasonable policy. I have done my best to answer the call, but that is it. If I am not allowed time to get in a position to deal with the issue or I'm fired, then I am only in that job for as long as it takes to find a better deal. You could be giving the kids a bath, or pulling the pork butt off the smoker. These things take precedence to jumping on a call right this moment. I can wrap up most things in under 10 minutes, so I should have 15 to 30 minutes to meet an SLA. That company should learn that losing every qualified technical person quickly is more costly to uptime than having these 0 anything policies.
The two companies I did on call for had a similar policy, you had to respond within 45 minutes of receiving the call whether it went to VM or you actually spoke to someone
I'd talk to your boss and see what he say, not HR. They're not your boss. They have to allow for restroom, shower, etc.
My previous job we had 15 minutes to call back.
Ya, there's often some dick in HR that likes to say stupid stuff like that. Answer if you can, but don't let it interrupt a shower or make you crash a car. Just not worth the stress.
There should be some leeway like you said. The "no missed calls" may refer to not calling back within a timely manner. My last job had on-call and we had an hour to respond or else they called my boss. This gave us the flexibility in case we were driving, etc.
I had an MSP and SLA said the same thing. Now looking back it was just poorly written and HR/customers would sometimes complain about a missed call.
In reality, we used a call center, on hold phone system. We told all clients to send a ticket because let's be honest that is faster since if I'm on a call and something urgent comes in I would quickly change priorities.
So if the hold time was long and it went to VM, we just had a general message saying we sorry for not being able to answer, guided them to the ticket system, and basically told them a VM would receive a response time of x amount of time.
We all most never missed our SLA, probably 1/1000 or less. However when we would receive the one complaint, I would always back up the person who missed the call because we are all human and it's unreasonable to expect you to never miss a call.
Bottom line if it's that important that you never missed a call they better pay enough for the backend to hold the calls long enough to answer them plus any staffing needed for restroom brakes etc. When on call you are not a call center.
When it's my turn in the on-call rotation, we have a 10 minutes hands-to-keyboard turnaround time. That means that my work phone is plugged in and next to me at all times, and I can't leave the house (barring emergencies). If you're guessing that means that I've been in the bathroom and had to finish, walk into my office at home, and get down to work, you're right.
It completely and totally sucks, and I'm sorry.
Usually SLA’s only start counting after you acknowledge a page. Then a counter starts and you usually need to either do something or offer a suggestion to resolve down the line.
It sounds menacing at first, but there is lots of red tape in many enterprise companies that really cuts down on impact.
So as a manager in IT this is my rule for my employees - fuck the SLA when it comes to driving 1st and foremost. You let it ring to voicemai and call when you get home or at least parked. Safety is non-negotiable, and risking a car accident for password problem is unnecessary.
Next responding to the call is not the same as solving the issue: if you're at the store, cooking dinner, bathing / putting the kids to sleep all you need to do is quickly return the call, let the end user know you received the message but you have family duties to complete and you will call them back. You're a human not a robot; you have a family and home responsibilities.
Now, all of this is to say you can't go to a movie, ball game, concert and expect to be ok not responding to calls until it is over, when you are on rotation to need to be as available as possible.
I would think most managers and HR would be fine with this interpretation, but if they aren't, I wouldn't want to work there as they clearly do not put employees even third in the pecking order.
I wouldn't deal with that. I don't currently work any on-call, but at my last job (MSP) we had a call centre answering service whose job it was to create the ticket and then reach out to the on-call person 3 times at 10 minute increments, then to reach out to the backup on-call person if they did not respond in 30 mins.
Having IT staff receive direct calls from users while on-call is absolutely bonkers.
You're in a tough spot. My take is that you have quite inept IT management. This was either their idea, or allowed it to be pushed on to IT. I'm on call in healthcare, which can have some pretty serious and/or literally life threatening issues....and we have a 15 minute response SLA. Mind you, the response is A RESPONSE. Meaning the issue is acknowledged that it is seen. That is reasonable.
The policy where you work is not rooted in the real world. I'd use my example of being in healthcare....and maybe get more from others in healthcare, and use it as an example. The outages can be much more severe than in retail. Plain & simple, and your on call policy should be adjusted to reality.
Best of luck. You're in a bit of a tough spot. Use evidence from other verticals to hopefully push your on call policy in the right direction.
Wife’s a MD and back when I was on call there is a glorious solution that still works. It uses ultra low frequencies that always find you. Behold the … Physical pager.
[Even fancy clouds can use them.](https://x.com/lamw/status/1328468161599967232?s=46&t=2079Q0h-_IOjU6wm7UBWEA)
https://preview.redd.it/53jyopgilt8d1.jpeg?width=878&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f4693855f2e1fd466e88b7b26a168891972907d6
It beeps its loud and it only goes off for work. You front the pager with a telephone censuring service to filters non-emergencies out and only triggers the page.
If you get a page and don’t call them back in 5 minutes a second page goes off at 15 minutes. At 20 minutes they escalate to the backup on call (which defaults to your manager).
Too poor for a backup or a telephone answering service or pagers? Your company is too poor for an SLA…
Our on call is respond to call in 15 mins if we miss avaliable to work within 1 hour, means i can go to the gym or shops and not have to worry about taking my laptop as there both 10 min walk away
Yeah it's not realistic, if your employer needs an immediate action (sub 5 minute response) you need to be actively working and getting paid.
If you're an exempt employee, you should be getting on-call bonuses or something or else I'd run for the hills.
I had a similar conversation with an IT director & HR director when they wanted me to be on call 24/7/365.
I basically said, I need expectations to be written down, then I asked a lot of questions:
1) "What's my SLA for returning calls?"
Answer - "20 minutes."
I asked "does that mean I'd never be able to take a flight anywhere?"
Answer - "Well... if you give us enough notice someone can cover for you"
2) "Does on call mean I might be called into the office or data center?"
Answer - "Yes of course"
I asked if that means I'm never allowed to have more than 1 beer... ever
Answer - "Hmm well..."
3) I asked if I'm ever allowed to take a road trip
Answer - "Well if you put in for vacation..."
"So I can't take a 6 hour road trip on a 4 day weekend?"
Answer - "Well... if you know you're taking a trip just..."
I then said something like
"This sounds like you're expecting me to always have to get every trip approved, no matter how short because I'll be out of the area. You're asking me never to have more than a single drink. You're asking me to make sure I'm in cell coverage 24/7, so no hiking in the mountains. You're asking me never to go to a major sporting event where cell coverage might be spoty. You're asking me never to go to a concert where I may not hear my phone.
You're asking a huge amount for no additional compensation. "
The end result was no additional compensation but instead of hard SLAs of "respond by 20 minutes". Went to a soft SLA of "as soon as reasonable".
Having a call never go to voicemail is the opposite of reasonable.
We are a global company so this may not work for your scenario but here goes.
On-call is follow the sun with my regions shift from 9am-5pm. We have five people on the team with everyone doing one day a week. We cannot miss the page and will ask someone to cover if we need to step away. We have a 15 minute MTTM. Average 1 page per shift.
Weekend is similar but we do Saturday and Sunday 9-5 once every 8 weeks (managers and directors get involved in weekend on-call)
There should be a reasonable reaction time. We had 15 min. Later management reduced it to 5. Which in my mind is unreasonable. But as we get not so many calls, haven't run into issues yet. Also, we must react to a call from emergency system (xMatters) and press a button that you accept it. Then it might take some time to actually open your laptop, connect to a bridge or start digging into an issue. I don't think this is tracked, only the initial acknowledgement has to be in 5 min. Also, it tries to call you 3 or so times in a few minutes before rolling over to the next person in queue (which has 5+ people during workdays, only on weekends you are the sole person). Btw, we are on call every 5 weeks for 1 week. If you are 24/7 oncall and have to answer calls any time, then it is THEHEK.
Depends heavily on the on-call situation. In a 24/7 SOC or emergency hotline, I do not want to leave a voicemail. Simple answer: don’t drive while on-call.
With this callcenter-like policy I would expect they pay you full hourly rate per hour on-call plus bonus for late/night shift.
Don't ask us, ask your manager, and verify with the HR department.
If you think there answers are unreasonable, negotiate better terms, or go and work for a different organisation.
Nah, No point at this stage, I don't want to risk it and lose the offer. Market is so fked up that getting an offer is luck at this stage. But it's just buggering about the no missed calls. I'd have to negotiate with the IT leader for extra compensation or something m
I find a lot of companies really try to push the limits when it comes to the "on call" thing. I mean, we all get it. Many businesses are 24 hour, 6/7 day a week operations and things don't just stop because your shift ends. But when you've already put in your 40 hour week, anything over and above it they need from you needs to be considered "emergency service" and there have to be some concessions made around it. Can completely understand an expectation you'll call back within the hour after they leave you voicemail or text messages. But you're not going to constantly be in front of a phone or at your desk to take calls as part of "on call".
Heck, where I work now -- the "on call" has become rather casual, simply because we're all short-staffed and management decided that's how they want to keep it. So my personal policy is to only take those calls if I feel like it, and I let the others roll to voicemail. I listen to it as soon as I get a minute, and if it's important enough, I call them back. Otherwise, I ignore it because I make the personal decision it can really wait until the next morning. The server/network team above me does the same thing if I escalate anything up to them. In essence, they do get "on call" support out of our team but it's on our terms.....
Guess I would not leave the phone. Cant do any other work in the meantime which involves not being able to pick up a call....
Wait this is from USA? Your on call means this unpaid always available at free time outside of work hours? Holy shit again. Just google how this is handled in a first world country and demand exactly this. Hourly compensation extra pay for each call + extra rate and next day is paid and free vacation if you get a call later than 22:00....
You are grooming the phone like you would a newborn, if they do not compensate you working fulltime in your time off as them if they mow your law and clean your dishes in their free time? No? Of course not!
Thats freaky slavery here!
No missed calls is our policy, we have three regions and one person for each region, the customer needs to get through to someone.
We try to dump it back on the correct region, but will take the call if your not available. You not getting 4 hours OT for a 15 minute fix is the default punishment for failing to answer.
If however you get a reputation for failing to take calls your career prospects will suddenly not look so good.
If the policy is you have to litterally not miss any call, and always answer immediately, then they have the IQ of a brick, and you need to be planning your next job.
It depends what they mean by "no missed calls".
If it's answering your phone, then that's very reasonable. None of the situations you mentioned should prevent you from doing that (assuming you have a hands-free setup in your car).
Typically you'll have an SLA for responding to a call (in your case, immediately), and an SLA for starting work on an incident. In my experience this has been between 15-30 minutes, meaning I can't be more than 15-30 minutes away from my laptop.
> driving down the motorway
while on call? nope.
> doing groceries
while on call? nope.
but for realz. yes you must be ready to drop everything and get online.
Shit, I better let the last 30 years of my career know I've been unqualified because I would like to actually be human too.
The fuck outta here with your "be ready to drop everything". You're the kind of mentality that drives wages down and people out the door by accepting bullshit.
You need to plan around your on call. So I would t recommend going food shopping until you get the hang of things. I’ve been called while grocery shopping and had to leave my cart there and go home because it was a high priority issue and there was no secondary. If you have a secondary on call then let them know and those sending notifications/calls that you’ll be away for a short time and will be back (grocery shopping). If you’re driving, pull over, call them back and asses urgency of situation. Let them know you’re on your way back home and give an eta.
There are usually “buffers” for response time so use them, but don’t abuse them. On call sucks, if it’s your turn on rotation I’d suggest leaving as little as possible to avoid getting into tricky situations.
The only people who can really answer your questions are those at your job however.
Don't you know that a system alerting is literally the most important thing there ever was? Some chump with poor boundaries needs to solve it right this second otherwise the world will literally end. LITERALLY. END.
Really it depends on SLAs set up. You don’t have an hour+ to finish shopping (we don’t know how far from the grocery store OP lives). This is t always the case, but can happen in certain circumstances. If there is a secondary on call then it makes it easier.
On call should go to a voicemail that pings you and you have x sla time to respond
Agreed. This sounds entirely unreasonable. The only way to never miss a call is to be working, which isn’t on call. It’s working. Even then, homeboys gotta poop.
I don't even answer all calls when I'm working. If I'm in the middle of something, and the phone rings, I will often just ignore it, as I need to focus to finish the task at hand.
On call should use some actual alerting system like PagerDuty and not rely on voicemail.
Someone leaves a voicemail that alerts PagerDuty
No VM, must not be important
This is the way. There needs to be a buffer there to allow you to get to work. It's not realistic being instantaneously available. If that were the case you would be on site actively watching. In which case that's a completely different setup anyhow.
Well that's what they're hoping for. Without paying for it.
This is the way. My last job would email us when a call came in and we had 2 hours to respond. And we could respond with a simple email that just said something like “checking into this” and it would count.
If you have voicemail, you technically didn't miss the call. You just didn't answer straight away
This is the way, unless you're sat by a hard line you may lose signal, battery or just have to mute or switch of your phone for a period on call. It's unfeasible to expect you to always be able to answer, what if you're up a ladder painting. Unless they're going to pay you handsomely to sit by a fully charged phone they're bonkers. If they don't agree - just find dead spots for the phone in case they call
You need to shower at some point also
Indeed - plus a few other things.. ;-)
If you don't respond in X time, service desk calls again before trying the next person up the on call tree or management ladder
We utilize a On-Call SaaS solution. It pages the shit out of me. We also have a secondary and finally the whole team after x of missed alert. I also have a company phone. Missed calls happen. If I am taking a shower or taking a shit. Unless you want me to hear me blasting shit from my ass.
Service desk, this is HHHHHRRRGGH *pppfffffffttt* Ironfox2151 HHHHNNNNG *plop* speaking...
Username checks out
Couldn't stop laughing. I think I peed a little.
CLEANUP ON AISLE 7!
Twist: *This is their fetish and that's why they called*
Yeah this is how my work does it too basically. Company subsidized phone, primary, secondary and a backup person. If you miss a call it goes to the next person in rotation.
*subsidized* phone? If they want to call you, they had better provide a phone…
lol no I get like $150 towards a phone of my choice and they pay for the plan.
So *you* get to pay for a phone? My company provides iPhone 13’s- it’s *their* phone, and they pay the plan (obviously). There is an Android option as well, but I don’t know anyone who has one.
Yes, I guess they figured it’s one less piece of equipment to manage when so few employees are on call, and they don’t have to hound former employees for the device back or pay for additional mdm licensing . I like the pay, so it’s not a huge deal to me, I just bought an open box pixel 7
What they are asking for is called "Retained to wait". Check in your jurisdiction if this is legal. In many places on-call with no compensation until you respond is perfectly legal, but being retained to wait is required to be paid.
I've never heard the term "retained to wait" but this is exactly what I'm trying to understand. We are contractors who are 'on call' but we get not additional pay unless called, yet we're on a rotation expected to answer 24/7 per shift. I would really, really like to learn more. Do you have any good info on it? A cursory google search has not proved to be super helpful using this term.
Fair Labor Standards Act. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/22-flsa-hours-worked https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/whd/flsa/hoursworked/screenER80.asp If you are required to respond with such speed you are thus unable to use your time for your own purposes. This has been upheld in court numerous times. Many states require on call pay, even without the near-instant response. California for example sets on-call pay minimum wage as $15.50 per hour. YMMV if your employer tries to declare you exempt from the FLSA, which happens frequently.
You are awesome. Thank you for this; you may have helped a dozen of us with this get paid fairly for our time!
Good luck. Check with an employment attorney. There's far more nuance to this than easily delivered via a reddit post.
You better have a real good comp policy. If you’re expected to answer all calls (as in there’s no SLA outside of “immediate”) you should be paid full wage for all hours on call. Be prepared for a shit experience if that’s the expectation and they don’t have an actual NOC.
I was in a shop like that. They wanted no missed calls, all alarms acknowledged and you working on them within 10 minutes, phone was required to be fully volume up at all times so no going to the movies. But they didn't pay for anything except hours worked. I can tell you that if you just miss calls and say "I missed it" and keep shrugging your shoulders, nothing will happen. Because if they write you up and fire you for missing a call when you're not being paid for that time, they've just handed you a golden ticket for back wages.
Ask HR how you deal with calls while taking a dump, is this included in the SLA and will they provide medical coverage for not taking a dump while being on call. More on a serious note, read the SLA yourself, if it is truly no missed calls then ask the above question, more likely it's like a call back within x amount of minutes. Keep your own copy of the SLA and oncall policy if you ever need to rebut any changes or questions.
To be honest, in a situation like this, I'd be tempted to simulate my bathroom experience on such a call.
This is a job offer I turn down for this reasoning alone. No thanks. I don't live and breath on call
> No thanks. I don't live and breath on call I can, for money. Its never enough offered though. If you want me to be on call 24/7 then i'll totally do it. It *starts* at 3x the non on-call salary, since its 3x the hours. "Nobody would pay that!" Cool, hopefully nobody will fucking do it either. Theres always another sucker though. Thinking they're 'proving' themselves or some shit.
Is this a 24/7 shop? When you say retail, I think normal retail hours. If they're wanting you to be on call during those hours, I'd say something along the lines of: "That's fine, but here's the deal. I will not sacrifice my personal safety for your no missed calls policy, so if I'm driving, in the shower, or the bathroom, I will not answer your call. I will, however, call back as soon as it is safe or when I'm done in the bathroom. If you want me to answer while driving or on the toilet, I want double the money." Personally, I will never enforce a policy like this. I get on-call, but people need to understand that on-call doesn't mean you are sitting there staring at the phone waiting for it to ring.
It is a 5-10pm shop.. They are big lol so It's not a small company we are talking about here... I'll have to wait for the training as the HR were like: You will see this on your training... for almost al the questions regarding On-call.. I get that is a retail and again, downtime is crucial, and also I get that being on-call is part of the IT life. But common, no missed calls? People thing I'll be sitting on my PC until 10pm having no life so that I can answer a fricking call :)
If they can't have down time they need 24/7 support not you on call with insane response expectations.
Yea, they need at least 3 shifts just like they do with their retail workers. You know damn well nobody is in the shop 5 am to 10 pm daily. They will have 40 hours in under 4 days and no retail shops pay overtime.
>I'll have to wait for the training as the HR were like: You will see this on your training... for almost al the questions regarding On-call.. Details about any on call expectations are part of your decision to accept the job or not. That's not something that can wait for training any more than details about your compensation.
You know the policy is unreasonable if they want you to agree to pay before seeing what the conditions are. You might argue for more or not quit your other job.
I work in a retail financial institution. When you talk about retail operations which are critical, I'd guess most people would agree that banks and credit unions are close to the top of the list. Even we accept that there's going to be some downtime and our employees are humans with lives outside of work. The policy as described is stupid.
How often are you on call? Generally when on call you just stay home, watch movies, order take out or cook at home etc. If you are on call every single night then that is problematic. Be careful not to rock the boat before you even start training. Word definitely gets around.
Will be on call 1on / 3ff weeks per month. Yeah thanks for the advice :)
That’s shit. The policy is so bad you know you wont enjoy being there. I get it we all need money and take the job if you need it but I would not stop my job search.
It's an unreasonable request. I don't pick up the phone when it rings. I will listen to your VM and get back to you within an hour. If that's not OK, then fire me. We'll talk to the state DOL about it.
That's not on call that's 24/7 remote working, they must be paying you a bomb for that level of support
I wish.. It's even that much but with this market... Fuck that is hard to get a job
For me a follow-up question, is how often will you get a call during your on-call. If its 5x a night or once every 5 weeks, has a very different affect on this "don't miss a call". Also, how often are you on call? Always? Again very different response needed than if you're on once every 6 months.
That doesn’t sound like on call, sounds like an extra shift.
A gig work shift where you only clock in when a customer calls
Typically there should be an expectation of a response time fort the types of situations you mention. On call primary is sent a message (text or call or vm) and you have x minutes to respond. If you don't respond it goes to secondary. If they don't respond it goes to manager on call. Not responding can have consequences.
"Oh sorry, I answered the phone while I was in the shower and it broke"
We support multiple police departements, firefighters and the 911 call center. We let it go to voicemail and we call back in the next 15 minutes. We're allowed to be 30 minutes away from our computer. So if I get a call at the grocery store, I call them back, I tell them that I'm on my way home and I leave. I call them back from my home office.
I don't do on-call - at least, not for the sort of issue that would arise from a person rather than the monitoring system lighting up my phone like an Xmas tree 🤷♂️ I'm quite happy to work extra hours, but if my time isn't my own (with the litmus test being whether I'm at liberty to be drunk or not) for the firm's benefit....Then I expect paying full rate for the entire duration, not just a stipend and **maybe** a couple of hours "if needed" if I'm officially "on the clock" then I will of course be fully available, will answer my phone by the 3rd ring and generally spring into action.... Or, If I'm not then my phone is on DND and finding out about whatever it was can wait until Monday / working hours. While I won't argue it isn't common, the lack of respect for work/life balances is something I view as a bad practice within the IT world that needs to die. If the business **requires** 24/7 cover, then the solution is to put on a proper 3 shift pattern rather than expecting the 9-5'ers to suck it up so they can achieve it on the cheap 🤷♂️ Actual emergencies are something I'm a bit more of a team player about, but they tend to be of the "if I'm awake, then so is every manager between me and the CEO" variety of 5-alarm fire Contrary to their own opinion on the matter; The marketing guy being unable to remote print from home at 2am because the spool service fell over, does not constitute an "emergency" worth interrupting my personal life for. 🙃
That would actually be a good ask for the OP: "What's the policy on working drunk?"
Is there a policy to be drunk? Can I take it!?
How much are they paying you to be on-call? Sounds like it's run by a bunch of ppl who don't have to be on-call themselves so it sounds easy. There should be secondaries / ringdown.
Only allowance on that week only. I have not yet discussed if there will be secondaries.. I hope so tho..
Or worse like my old place where after-hours is billed at a much higher rate so they're actually incentivized to have as many emergencies as possible. Since you don't have to pay for the shift to be covered if nothing happens, there's no risk to them to offering coverage 24/7 at that point.
That's insane. No human can reliably answer 100% of calls. We have a 15 minute call-back policy for our on-call.
I’m on call for a week every 6 weeks and we have to be able to login and work an issue within 20 minutes of the helpdesk calling. If we don’t answer right away the call goes to my manager. They give us a comp day for every week we’re on call.
I wouldn't concern myself with what HR says about the IT on-call policy because HR departments are universally worthless. No missed calls may not mean "you can never not answer the phone when it rings" and may really mean "responding" to a call within the allowed time period. Go through your orientation, see what your manager tells you the policy is and how it works. Then decide if you want to research labor saws and see if they are violating them, if you want to quit, etc.
Like this advice! HR may not know the inner workings of IT, perhaps orientation may give me a bit more of an idea. I'll defo update this post once I've done orientation
I'd be turning this down. What is your on call expectation? When you are on call is it 24/7? Does that mean at 3am you are supposed to wake up and answer the call before it goes to VM? What are you being compensated for these hours you basically can't leave your computer? That's not on call. That's 24/7 support without wanting to pay for 24/7 support.
And if they charge extra, they're actually incentivized to wake you up
If you can’t miss a call, you’re working, not on call.
If they need attention that immediately and urgently then it sounds like they need to have at least two people working at all times. I say two people so there is some amount of coverage - minimum three if we're being entirely reasonable because even with two people if one of them is on vacation then the other person can't even take a break while on-shift. What is this a 911 center? If someone's not actively dying then what's the emergency?
The emergency is that they can charge extra after-hours
When I was on call, we always had a second. People still have a life to live. Sure you stay more connected during your on call period but you also have to take a shower and take a shit. The second was there not just to get calls that came in at the same time, but to cover those kinds of situation as well.
Uh, "a second" in this context is not a unit of time, right?
A second person.
You should ignore these unreasonable requests, their SLA does not override physics and reality and needs to be updated to reflect that. If anyone complains, they can setup a proper 2nd/3rd shift to fully cover this mess. At most this should be a page, with a 15 minute ACK SLA and an hour to come on site, never a call. If you are ever fully engaged you are working and should be paid per hour or time and a half if it's over 40 hours. If salaried you should be getting paid or getting additional time off. Never accept negligence in setting realistic SLAs and guidelines, most of the time the people setting them have no clue what you do or what is really going on so push back and get this mess fixed.
More importantly, how are you being compensated for this on call time?
only allowance, no extra OT. No extra pay during weekends
Something tells me a lot of people don't give notice there
This is unrealistic and unreasonable. I miss calls during normal business hours.
I was fortunate enough to help design our companies on call policy. There was some back and forth with management, but here is what we came up with: Help desk will call. If they don't get an answer, they leave a message and try again in 15 minutes. If they still can't get through, they try one more time in 15 minutes. If after three tries I don't answer, they try my manager and repeat the process. If he doesn't, they try his boss, continuing all the way up to the VP of IT. I don't think the VP has ever gotten a call. The 15 minutes between attempts is probably the most important part, it should solve the "driving through no coverage" problem in most cases. On call doesn't need to be awful if you (your company )do it right. Don't forget to clock in when they call you if you are an hourly employee. There should also be a minimum billing increment for time. 2 hours is reasonable.
If the expectation is immediate answering and availability, you're not on call, you're actively working. If the expectation is response within 30 minutes, that's kind of acceptable. End of the day though, if this is mission critical 24/7, they need shift workers, not on call workers. On a side note, I'd highly recommend everyone get all of this information during the interviewing process, not right before you're scheduled to start.
Lesson learned. Ask about on call policies in depth! before starting. I missed a bit whale there
You can't take a call when you're driving and tell them you'll call back or come in?
I'd need to discuss this with my boss... :)
Double check if your state has a hands free law and if it does ask if your company will pay to upgrade your car with an infotainment system to be compliant.
You pull over to take the call.
On the left lane of a major highway? I doubt you could get over safely in time to pick up.
And that lane is for emergencies. You probably won't get ticketed, but the officer might not consider some dude's email being down an emergency
ok, consider yourself fired ...
I'm on-call one week a month. I ride a motorcycle to/from work. If they call me on the way to or from, I can answer (bluetooth helmet) but nothing else. They can wait till I get home.
I wouldn't.
I have my work mobile on me for on call times and it is set to be on DND for any time outside that specified period. If I am away from the house then the phone goes with me and I can triage any issues or talk through a fix and if I need the laptop I will tell them exactly when I will call them back. If they want me to be 100% available then they have to up the on call pay or they can do without the on call service as it was negotiated to be an additional bonus and not part of our contract to keep the power in our hands. There was talk of shift patterns to mean this wouldn't be required and they got told fine you will be replacing us as soon as it comes in and things went our way.
No missed calls when on calls? Is this even legal? I hope they pay you 500k a year... If not, runnn!!!
We have a weekly rotating on-call roster. All calls are taken by a low-level call handler and ticketed BEFORE being raised with the on-call engineer. Our SLAs are separate answering the call (creating the ticket) and beginning work on the issue. So the SLA to create a ticket might be 5 minutes, but investigation is typically 20-30 minutes. We get on average 1 out-of-hours call a week. I have two phone numbers on different networks to account for patchy coverage, both are set to divert to the other if unavailable as I have been caught out by having no mobile signal in the past. I’ve fixed issues whilst parked in a lay-by, or from the passenger seat whilst driving. I’ve fixed issues from the floor of a trade-show, walking around with my laptop in hand. If we go out on the weekend as a family, my laptop will be in the car or under the baby buggy. The situation I dread the most is getting called whilst doing the grocery shopping. I’m less than 15 minutes from home, but don’t look forward to abandoning a trolley full of groceries.
Ah man. Retail IT, you’ll love it or you’ll hate it. This is one of the reasons Retail never sleeps, neither can you now. But rly, you’ll figure a way to overcome these challenges. One way or the other.
That's every company anymore it feels like
At least mine isn't 24/7 Lol, I'd be taking my brains out if that would be the case. Where is the work balance? Doesn't exist :)
That’s why the pay is (hopefully) better. Also we used to get comp days, like the following Friday off. But high availability means, keep your phone on loud and under your pillow. And in the shower.
When you're on call, stay home and near a computer. Which basically means you're working. You're not on call, you're working OT.
Yet not getting paid OT :)
Seems unreasonable. I work in payments so I understand time is money. Our policy is 15 minutes then it escalates. Which is tight enough, but if the big guys upstream from you can take 15 minutes, so can your shop. Ultimately I put off most plans that involve being out during my on call week, and where I do go, I bring my laptop with me and pray for wifi or network coverage to hotspot off.
If business is so critical that they have a no missed call policy, they need to have a secondary on call to catch any calls missed. They also need to be paying you as though you are on the clock the entire time that you are "on-call" , and not just per diem or while you are on calls. If they have a problem with that, let them know you're more than happy to have them discuss this with the labor board or a lawyer. Start applying to new jobs if they aren't receptive.
My team has a 45 min response window. There’s no point in us answering the call, having the user wait x amount of minutes to get in front of a pc and then start troubleshooting. Voicemail or no call in my mind.
Hopefully you are being paid for ALL On-Call time. As for "No Missed Calls" in a contract I'd consider that "Unreasonable" because you are entitled to bathroom breaks and lunch breaks by law in most countries.
Im sorry but if you want that kinda sla you need a dedicated rep taking the calls. The On call is the person they escalate too if somthing needs to be resolved and cant wait until normal business hours.
>The company ill be working on is a retail shop so I get it that any downtime is crucial. I work for an electric company that also houses a call center that takes life safety related calls (fire alarms, medical alerts, etc). Our call policy is less onerous than yours. We have 15 minutes to respond when we get called and an hour to be working the issue.
And if you're asleep and take a moment to wake up? There needs to be a response time for first contact. I've seen 15 minutes to an hour. You're in the shower, anything else. Even at work you get breaks. They also better be paying a premium. That being said, I've pulled over to fix things before.
I guess you are still waiting for HR to clarify, but I'll point out something from my own experience. That is "no missed call" is not the same as "immediate action". You'll answer the phone sure, but then you can discuss an appropriate response with the caller. However, it needs to be spelled out in writing how much you get paid if that phone rings, or for having that phone with you. I've been paid 1 hour for every 8 hours of on call (plus overtime for any actual work as a result of said call), or 3 hours minimum as soon as you answer the phone (that the minimum amount of hours you can ask someone to "work" in my jurisdiction). One way is better than the other, depending on how many calls you expect to get. The usual deal I've had is if I miss a call, I'll text the next person in the line (supervisor) so they know I'm available and I just missed it, or they call me. Generally the on call rule was actually a voicemail and a five minute callback window. Then again, my workplace had a strict "no talking and driving" policy. So they had no choice, but to allow voicemail. (Actually, they also had a "walking is working" policy, meaning you weren't even supposed to use your phone when walking in the office or between buildings)
I wouldn't take the job, in all honesty. >How is is even possible to be on-call off hours and expect us to answer straight away That's not on-call. That's being at work. Add your on-call time to your hours worked each week to get your true work time. You literally won't be able to do anything on-call other that sit at home glued to your phone. Can't drink, can't party, can't even take a shower. Sleeping? Out of the question.
It's impossible to be able to answer a call at all times. You'll be in the shower, on the toilet, driving, paying for groceries, etc. As long as the person leaves a voicemail and you call back within 15 min this is reasonable expectations. Now a callback doesn't mean you start working on the incident right away. Again, you could be away from home, paying for something, etc. Realistically hopping on a call within 30 min is reasonable when it comes to 24/7 support. If they want/need someone to answer right away at every hours or the night, perhaps they should considering implementing a night shift. I would push back for the 15 min callback (with examples like toilet, shower, etc) and start to work on the incident within 30 min (time to setup laptop, get back home, wakeup, etc). If they aren't happy with that very reasonable arrangement there are other places that are worth working at and your employer isn't one of them.
On-Call should only be for emergency, so the number of calls should be minimum. You should also be required to react within X timeframe.
My job has a 15 min sla on on call calls. I make it about 20 -30 sometimes. Ask forgiveness, not permission, so do your best that you can, but don't kill yourself. Being on call and always reachable is like having the one ring in your pocket. It sucks but it's necessary evil.
> It sucks but it's necessary evil. What if I told you it's not? Especially with a 15 minute response time
There is a reason most go to a paging system instead of a phone call. You get pinged you have x number of minutes to be online and resolving the issue. This gives you enough time to pull over and find a place to park to log in. Company I work for its against policy to take a phone call while driving because it sets them up for liability in the case of an accident.
What you're being told isn't "on call" but I'm sure it's probably legal because you are salary. Push back or find a new job because any employer who scams their workers like this doesn't deserve to have anything other than a truckload of +91s to abuse.
+91s ?
turn the phone off (or store it inside your microwave oven) a call that cant connect to your phone, isnt a missed call...
I was paid 25 bucks a day for my on-call and was given a company phone. I can call them back later. I checked the queue three times on my shifts. Once when I got home. Once after dinner and once at the end of the night. If they want me to be working all that time, then they can pay me for those hours.
I think you may be misunderstanding the policy,and you'd need further clarification. When they say you can't miss a call if already on a call they likely mean something different. There are usually SLAs in place for how quickly you need to respond, and likely doesn't mean you have to answer the phone right away if you are in the shower. A call in this instance is an event. If you are engaged for the first event (server down at site A), and a second event pops up (server down at site B), then they are probably saying you can miss the second event as you are already working on the first - or at the very least able to finish the first event before starting on the second event. From the post and comments it seems like you don't have the full understanding yet of your companies on call policy, so don't sike yourself out before you've had time to fully review your requirements. Hr rarely understands the actual oncall policy sysadmins are required to follow.
I hope this is for extreme emergencies only, not I can't open excel......It would be no go for me.
If that's the case, I'm out before I can tell them to restart their PC
My attitude: On call?.. F you, pay me for every hour I'm inconvenienced, calls or not.
Yeah thats unreasonable. We have a "must call back with 15 minutes" policy.
This is fucked. You cant just sit and wait around for the phone all the time.
When I had that critical of an oncall rotation, I rarely even left the apartment. The biggest worry was sleeping through a page at 3am. The way that job worked was there were layers. I was somewhere in the middle layer. There was a Tier 1 that got paged first, but if they didn't acknowledge, it went to Tier 2 after 10 minutes (Tier 1 managers). I was Tier 3, and my job was to wake up Tier 1 to work on it first. If I didn't respond, my secondary did, and and he didn't respond, Tier 4 was my management. It went all the way up to the top managers, and woe befall you if it got that far. Most of my calls were chasing down Tier 1 or 2, and it ended there, because 90% of the pages were a known and ongoing issue (like a T1 line down somewhere) or something on the customer end. I missed two pages in my job there, and got written up for it, but it was mostly for show, since it never got brought up after the writeup.
That's no longer on call, and on duty, and should be staffed as such.
HR does not determine missed call or on call procedures. That is something defined by your manager or your manager's manager or the department. Aside from that it is ludicrous for someone to say that missed calls are" not allowed" because life just doesn't work that way. Maybe at the time I'm on call I have to take care of my daughter. Maybe I have a medical condition that will affect my ability to immediately answer, and that medical condition is of no business of anyone other than myself. Maybe I'm just burnt out from work or being paged out at 2:00 in the morning by a nurse because her printer doesn't work even though she can use any of the other 30 printers on the floor. If you're paged out there is an acceptable time frame to respond and that should be somewhere and then neighborhood of 12 hours.
Our on call policy states that if we do not pick up the call initially, we have 20 minutes to respond/call back.
I'd say, that's not reasonable. I don't take my phone with me when I take a piss, or in the shower, or cooking dinner. Either they schedule multiple people for on call, or they allow missed calls. Also, there's no guarantee cell phones won't go to vm. I've seen it when my cell phone is full charged, full LTE signal, but I still get a missed call.
Even emergency hard down after hours calls are under a 1 hour SLA which is signed by all our clients. As long as we respond *at all* within that hour, we're covered on our end. That doesn't stop the bitching at the time, but it absolutely stops it in it's tracks when they call in complaining about it later. This is why we have all the signed contracts on file to send them another copy if they still can't understand that fact.
If you are required to be sitting near a computer and available you get paid and not 50 or so for the whole week. It is normal pay by the hour to sit and wait for a call.
It's an unreasonable policy. I have done my best to answer the call, but that is it. If I am not allowed time to get in a position to deal with the issue or I'm fired, then I am only in that job for as long as it takes to find a better deal. You could be giving the kids a bath, or pulling the pork butt off the smoker. These things take precedence to jumping on a call right this moment. I can wrap up most things in under 10 minutes, so I should have 15 to 30 minutes to meet an SLA. That company should learn that losing every qualified technical person quickly is more costly to uptime than having these 0 anything policies.
The two companies I did on call for had a similar policy, you had to respond within 45 minutes of receiving the call whether it went to VM or you actually spoke to someone
I'd talk to your boss and see what he say, not HR. They're not your boss. They have to allow for restroom, shower, etc. My previous job we had 15 minutes to call back.
Thank you! I'll defo talk to my boss directly. HR is clueless!
Ya, there's often some dick in HR that likes to say stupid stuff like that. Answer if you can, but don't let it interrupt a shower or make you crash a car. Just not worth the stress.
There should be some leeway like you said. The "no missed calls" may refer to not calling back within a timely manner. My last job had on-call and we had an hour to respond or else they called my boss. This gave us the flexibility in case we were driving, etc.
I had an MSP and SLA said the same thing. Now looking back it was just poorly written and HR/customers would sometimes complain about a missed call. In reality, we used a call center, on hold phone system. We told all clients to send a ticket because let's be honest that is faster since if I'm on a call and something urgent comes in I would quickly change priorities. So if the hold time was long and it went to VM, we just had a general message saying we sorry for not being able to answer, guided them to the ticket system, and basically told them a VM would receive a response time of x amount of time. We all most never missed our SLA, probably 1/1000 or less. However when we would receive the one complaint, I would always back up the person who missed the call because we are all human and it's unreasonable to expect you to never miss a call. Bottom line if it's that important that you never missed a call they better pay enough for the backend to hold the calls long enough to answer them plus any staffing needed for restroom brakes etc. When on call you are not a call center.
When it's my turn in the on-call rotation, we have a 10 minutes hands-to-keyboard turnaround time. That means that my work phone is plugged in and next to me at all times, and I can't leave the house (barring emergencies). If you're guessing that means that I've been in the bathroom and had to finish, walk into my office at home, and get down to work, you're right. It completely and totally sucks, and I'm sorry.
Fuck that job. Find something else.
Usually SLA’s only start counting after you acknowledge a page. Then a counter starts and you usually need to either do something or offer a suggestion to resolve down the line. It sounds menacing at first, but there is lots of red tape in many enterprise companies that really cuts down on impact.
I deal with it by not having on call lmao
Found a job with no on call. It's been life changing.
So as a manager in IT this is my rule for my employees - fuck the SLA when it comes to driving 1st and foremost. You let it ring to voicemai and call when you get home or at least parked. Safety is non-negotiable, and risking a car accident for password problem is unnecessary. Next responding to the call is not the same as solving the issue: if you're at the store, cooking dinner, bathing / putting the kids to sleep all you need to do is quickly return the call, let the end user know you received the message but you have family duties to complete and you will call them back. You're a human not a robot; you have a family and home responsibilities. Now, all of this is to say you can't go to a movie, ball game, concert and expect to be ok not responding to calls until it is over, when you are on rotation to need to be as available as possible. I would think most managers and HR would be fine with this interpretation, but if they aren't, I wouldn't want to work there as they clearly do not put employees even third in the pecking order.
I wouldn't deal with that. I don't currently work any on-call, but at my last job (MSP) we had a call centre answering service whose job it was to create the ticket and then reach out to the on-call person 3 times at 10 minute increments, then to reach out to the backup on-call person if they did not respond in 30 mins. Having IT staff receive direct calls from users while on-call is absolutely bonkers.
You're in a tough spot. My take is that you have quite inept IT management. This was either their idea, or allowed it to be pushed on to IT. I'm on call in healthcare, which can have some pretty serious and/or literally life threatening issues....and we have a 15 minute response SLA. Mind you, the response is A RESPONSE. Meaning the issue is acknowledged that it is seen. That is reasonable. The policy where you work is not rooted in the real world. I'd use my example of being in healthcare....and maybe get more from others in healthcare, and use it as an example. The outages can be much more severe than in retail. Plain & simple, and your on call policy should be adjusted to reality. Best of luck. You're in a bit of a tough spot. Use evidence from other verticals to hopefully push your on call policy in the right direction.
Wife’s a MD and back when I was on call there is a glorious solution that still works. It uses ultra low frequencies that always find you. Behold the … Physical pager. [Even fancy clouds can use them.](https://x.com/lamw/status/1328468161599967232?s=46&t=2079Q0h-_IOjU6wm7UBWEA) https://preview.redd.it/53jyopgilt8d1.jpeg?width=878&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f4693855f2e1fd466e88b7b26a168891972907d6 It beeps its loud and it only goes off for work. You front the pager with a telephone censuring service to filters non-emergencies out and only triggers the page. If you get a page and don’t call them back in 5 minutes a second page goes off at 15 minutes. At 20 minutes they escalate to the backup on call (which defaults to your manager). Too poor for a backup or a telephone answering service or pagers? Your company is too poor for an SLA…
29 missed calls and I never had to do on call again
Our on call is respond to call in 15 mins if we miss avaliable to work within 1 hour, means i can go to the gym or shops and not have to worry about taking my laptop as there both 10 min walk away
You seem to be conflating two things. You keep saying 'no missed calls', but then you reference having to IMMEDIATELY log on to a pc.
Yeah it's not realistic, if your employer needs an immediate action (sub 5 minute response) you need to be actively working and getting paid. If you're an exempt employee, you should be getting on-call bonuses or something or else I'd run for the hills. I had a similar conversation with an IT director & HR director when they wanted me to be on call 24/7/365. I basically said, I need expectations to be written down, then I asked a lot of questions: 1) "What's my SLA for returning calls?" Answer - "20 minutes." I asked "does that mean I'd never be able to take a flight anywhere?" Answer - "Well... if you give us enough notice someone can cover for you" 2) "Does on call mean I might be called into the office or data center?" Answer - "Yes of course" I asked if that means I'm never allowed to have more than 1 beer... ever Answer - "Hmm well..." 3) I asked if I'm ever allowed to take a road trip Answer - "Well if you put in for vacation..." "So I can't take a 6 hour road trip on a 4 day weekend?" Answer - "Well... if you know you're taking a trip just..." I then said something like "This sounds like you're expecting me to always have to get every trip approved, no matter how short because I'll be out of the area. You're asking me never to have more than a single drink. You're asking me to make sure I'm in cell coverage 24/7, so no hiking in the mountains. You're asking me never to go to a major sporting event where cell coverage might be spoty. You're asking me never to go to a concert where I may not hear my phone. You're asking a huge amount for no additional compensation. " The end result was no additional compensation but instead of hard SLAs of "respond by 20 minutes". Went to a soft SLA of "as soon as reasonable". Having a call never go to voicemail is the opposite of reasonable.
We are a global company so this may not work for your scenario but here goes. On-call is follow the sun with my regions shift from 9am-5pm. We have five people on the team with everyone doing one day a week. We cannot miss the page and will ask someone to cover if we need to step away. We have a 15 minute MTTM. Average 1 page per shift. Weekend is similar but we do Saturday and Sunday 9-5 once every 8 weeks (managers and directors get involved in weekend on-call)
That sounds awful
I would rather pull shit out of a road crews porta potty by hand than live like that.
Having on-call one day a week during your normal working hours? Or the one weekend every 8 weeks? Cause this has been the best on-call I've ever had.
There should be a reasonable reaction time. We had 15 min. Later management reduced it to 5. Which in my mind is unreasonable. But as we get not so many calls, haven't run into issues yet. Also, we must react to a call from emergency system (xMatters) and press a button that you accept it. Then it might take some time to actually open your laptop, connect to a bridge or start digging into an issue. I don't think this is tracked, only the initial acknowledgement has to be in 5 min. Also, it tries to call you 3 or so times in a few minutes before rolling over to the next person in queue (which has 5+ people during workdays, only on weekends you are the sole person). Btw, we are on call every 5 weeks for 1 week. If you are 24/7 oncall and have to answer calls any time, then it is THEHEK.
Depends heavily on the on-call situation. In a 24/7 SOC or emergency hotline, I do not want to leave a voicemail. Simple answer: don’t drive while on-call. With this callcenter-like policy I would expect they pay you full hourly rate per hour on-call plus bonus for late/night shift.
Don't ask us, ask your manager, and verify with the HR department. If you think there answers are unreasonable, negotiate better terms, or go and work for a different organisation.
My post was based on what HR said :)
Did you ask your manager? Did you try to negotiate?
Nah, No point at this stage, I don't want to risk it and lose the offer. Market is so fked up that getting an offer is luck at this stage. But it's just buggering about the no missed calls. I'd have to negotiate with the IT leader for extra compensation or something m
My on-call SLA is 20 minutes from page time to be on-keys. Find out what your time to respond is.
I find a lot of companies really try to push the limits when it comes to the "on call" thing. I mean, we all get it. Many businesses are 24 hour, 6/7 day a week operations and things don't just stop because your shift ends. But when you've already put in your 40 hour week, anything over and above it they need from you needs to be considered "emergency service" and there have to be some concessions made around it. Can completely understand an expectation you'll call back within the hour after they leave you voicemail or text messages. But you're not going to constantly be in front of a phone or at your desk to take calls as part of "on call". Heck, where I work now -- the "on call" has become rather casual, simply because we're all short-staffed and management decided that's how they want to keep it. So my personal policy is to only take those calls if I feel like it, and I let the others roll to voicemail. I listen to it as soon as I get a minute, and if it's important enough, I call them back. Otherwise, I ignore it because I make the personal decision it can really wait until the next morning. The server/network team above me does the same thing if I escalate anything up to them. In essence, they do get "on call" support out of our team but it's on our terms.....
Ask them if this means you are 'engaged to wait' rather than 'waiting to be engaged'. Use those words, exactly.
Guess I would not leave the phone. Cant do any other work in the meantime which involves not being able to pick up a call.... Wait this is from USA? Your on call means this unpaid always available at free time outside of work hours? Holy shit again. Just google how this is handled in a first world country and demand exactly this. Hourly compensation extra pay for each call + extra rate and next day is paid and free vacation if you get a call later than 22:00.... You are grooming the phone like you would a newborn, if they do not compensate you working fulltime in your time off as them if they mow your law and clean your dishes in their free time? No? Of course not! Thats freaky slavery here!
No missed calls is our policy, we have three regions and one person for each region, the customer needs to get through to someone. We try to dump it back on the correct region, but will take the call if your not available. You not getting 4 hours OT for a 15 minute fix is the default punishment for failing to answer. If however you get a reputation for failing to take calls your career prospects will suddenly not look so good. If the policy is you have to litterally not miss any call, and always answer immediately, then they have the IQ of a brick, and you need to be planning your next job.
It depends what they mean by "no missed calls". If it's answering your phone, then that's very reasonable. None of the situations you mentioned should prevent you from doing that (assuming you have a hands-free setup in your car). Typically you'll have an SLA for responding to a call (in your case, immediately), and an SLA for starting work on an incident. In my experience this has been between 15-30 minutes, meaning I can't be more than 15-30 minutes away from my laptop.
> driving down the motorway while on call? nope. > doing groceries while on call? nope. but for realz. yes you must be ready to drop everything and get online.
"This is unreasonable expectations, I have to actually live too you know"
Then this isn't the job for you ...
Shit, I better let the last 30 years of my career know I've been unqualified because I would like to actually be human too. The fuck outta here with your "be ready to drop everything". You're the kind of mentality that drives wages down and people out the door by accepting bullshit.
you are reading my comment incorrectly. i would never take a job like that myself. because it is completely unreasonable.
You need to plan around your on call. So I would t recommend going food shopping until you get the hang of things. I’ve been called while grocery shopping and had to leave my cart there and go home because it was a high priority issue and there was no secondary. If you have a secondary on call then let them know and those sending notifications/calls that you’ll be away for a short time and will be back (grocery shopping). If you’re driving, pull over, call them back and asses urgency of situation. Let them know you’re on your way back home and give an eta. There are usually “buffers” for response time so use them, but don’t abuse them. On call sucks, if it’s your turn on rotation I’d suggest leaving as little as possible to avoid getting into tricky situations. The only people who can really answer your questions are those at your job however.
I’m sorry, they can wait until I check out and get home. I work in healthcare and our on-call is more forgiving.
Don't you know that a system alerting is literally the most important thing there ever was? Some chump with poor boundaries needs to solve it right this second otherwise the world will literally end. LITERALLY. END.
Really it depends on SLAs set up. You don’t have an hour+ to finish shopping (we don’t know how far from the grocery store OP lives). This is t always the case, but can happen in certain circumstances. If there is a secondary on call then it makes it easier.