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BLUF:  Does anyone have experience with an Engineering organization requiring Engineers to be available to respond to top-priority customer issues outside normal business hours?  Specifically, I'm looking for guidance on how to implement this new expectation (of 24/7 availability) where it did not exist previously.   

I am one of several Engineering Directors in our Global R&D organization.  The Support organization has asked that Engineering formulate a plan for Engineering to respond (with an actual Engineer) to a catastrophic customer situation (such as a production outage) that may occur outside normal business hours.  We estimate that such a situation may occur two-to-four times a year across all product lines.  
 
We have over 500 Engineers worldwide, but every engineer typically specializes in a very small (one or a few) number of products.  Our Engineering teams are distributed across the U.S., Canada, the U.K., India, and Australia.  Most (if not all) Engineers are salaried employees not eligible for overtime pay.  
 
I volunteered to help organize this initiative among my peers.  After some initial conversations, I believe that if we are asking Engineers to be "on call" on a 24/7 basis (and this was not a prior expectation of the position), then we are ethically obligated to offer additional compensation that goes along with this added responsibility.  My HR group is currently researching this also, as I suspect employment laws in different regions will legally require us to adjust compensation.  
 
I appreciate any thoughts, cautions, or other guidance from this community regarding implementing this new expectation.  
 
Thank you.  
 

jib88's picture

Yes, you should compensate employees if you are asking them to be on standby, even if nothing happens. This is because by asking them to be on standby, you are controlling what they do outside of work (you don't want someone on standby becoming inebriated or traveling where they cannot be reached). It doesn't have to be a lot, but should be enough that you get people to volunteer.

They should also get paid more on top of the standby if they get called to do something, as you are asking for their time. You can probably set one rate for all exempt employees in the company, but non-exempt people will likely need to be paid overtime rates.

You need a policy in place that employees and managers can refer to (preferably global), covering definitions of standby & call-out, payment rates, hours covered and minimums around number of hours paid for each "incident".

With that big a group of engineers, you can probably ask for volunteers and get around the problem of reclassifying jobs. I'm sure there are a number of people that would like the extra money, especially considering that they might not need to do anything during those hours.

-JIB

Anandha's picture
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 While at an investment bank in the UK, all the dev team was on support on a rota, non-negotiable. The reason we gave was very similar to the reason Paul English describes in this article

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20100201/the-way-i-work-paul-english-of-kaya...

The engineers and I handle customer support. When I tell people that, they look at me like I’m smoking crack. They say, “Why would you pay an engineer $150,000 to answer phones when you could pay someone in Arizona $8 an hour?” If you make the engineers answer e-mails and phone calls from the customers, the second or third time they get the same question, they’ll actually stop what they’re doing and fix the code. Then we don’t have those questions anymore.

 

Basically, its your code, you know it best, be accountable and take ownership of it. Support is part of your responsibilities. People complained, but no one left. And we got less support calls after a few months of the dev team taking over support.

Anandha

quietlife4me's picture
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I've worked in a "level 3" on-call environment for the past 15 years.  Part of the reason you got compensated so highly was because it was expected you would be "on-call" 24x7..or nearly so.

However, along with the "extra" compensation came several perks...

1. company paid/reimbursed/provided cell phone

2. company provided laptop

 

I would _highly_ recommend you at least do #1 if you are attempting to convert your not 24x7 people into 24x7 people.  We rolled it out like so:

 

"as a benefit of receiving a laptop and a company paid phone, we expect you to be oncall"  (note: it was acceptable to use the cell phone as your personal phone, within reason.  Or instead the company would pay $100/m of your personal phone plan)

we then set out 3 levels of "on call" as part of the rollout.

1. If you get a phone call and a VM after hours...the expectation is you will respond within 15 minutes

2. If you get a txt message...the expectation is you will respond within an hour

3. If you get an email...the expectation is you will respond within 24 hours

 

Align the expectations with the "compensation" and you'll only hear grumbling from the usual suspect of employees ;)

-Tyler

 

dmh's picture

The biggest factor is how often the rotation is. Typically you have a primary and a backup. In EITHER case you need to be 'available' and able to meet the response time SLAs.

Will they be on call once a month? once a quarter?

Publishing the schedule well in advance to let people negotiate trades also helps. 

What is the policy on showing up to work late if you had to take a call at 3AM?

Personally I'd pay for my own cell phone if it meant could decline this "benefit"...I like to be able to enjoy my rare time outside of work.

Gareth's picture

For me to key here is the low number of incidents that would require this process. It would be the exception rather than the rule during the year. That said you can't trust an informal process. Getting the basics right such as company cell phones and laptops with remote working capability would help significantly.

I would look at this differently HOWEVER:

You could move away from the 'on-call' process to 'follow the sun'. Take advantage of your geographic locations so you would ALWAYS have an office in daytime. I'm sure that each location looks after certain products and the nature of the work would make this a challenge (or impossibility) but you could look to multi-skill across regions for 'incidents' only.

Regards, 

Gareth

svibanez's picture

Our support comes first from field service technicians, then is elevated to engineers when necessary.  In both groups we have somebody on call after working hours.  Each person is paid a certain amount for every day they are on call.  If they get a call that they can handle by telephone or email, they get more (either double the on-call rate or their straight hourly rate for the time they work the problem, whichever is greater).  If the call requires them to actually visit the customer site, they get even more (typically 4x their straight hourly rate or the time they work on the problem, whichever is greater). We also allow those who worked late to come to work late the next day as safety is always the top priority.

I really like Gareth's idea of following the sun.  I sure wish we had that option in my organization!

Steve

DiSC 7114

svibanez's picture

Our support comes first from field service technicians, then is elevated to engineers when necessary.  In both groups we have somebody on call after working hours.  Each person is paid a certain amount for every day they are on call.  If they get a call that they can handle by telephone or email, they get more (either double the on-call rate or their straight hourly rate for the time they work the problem, whichever is greater).  If the call requires them to actually visit the customer site, they get even more (typically 4x their straight hourly rate or the time they work on the problem, whichever is greater). We also allow those who worked late to come to work late the next day as safety is always the top priority.

I really like Gareth's idea of following the sun.  I sure wish we had that option in my organization!

Steve

DiSC 7114