Good points Clint.
The path I chose was to lead by example, which usually helps moral.
I take the evening and weekend shifts personally.
I also learned that for monitoring, that I could not always rely on a third
party.
When someone was on call, would they really be? Did I get the message
before the on call person?
I felt a better approach was to have some paid weekend hours. For example,
each tech has to work one Saturday a month.
Thats the day the hard to organize residential job gets done, or the day
research and paperwork gets caught up on, or that network documetnation and
management, etc.
And if an emergency occurs, he gets pulled to take care of it. We rely on
Voice Mail heavilly on Weekends, and support on call back only.
And if I need someone on a late evening, they get paid time and a half or
trade it for a larger number of hours off one day later in the week. Its
understood that its the tech's responsibilty to do tech, and will require
some evening work. But by doing the monitoring personally, I can make the
judgement call on whether its cost justified to pay the tech to go onsite
after hours.
That may not scale, but for me its the reality of being a small business
owner, until I grow large enough to hire for those periods.
Also the sceond highest paid person, ios nmber 2 on the list for
responsibility, and they also monitor as a backup to me. They may not get
the alert at 3am, always, but I'm likely to learn about it a few hours
before the start of business, if I miss the message personally.
The larger you get the easier it gets to share the load. But with only 1 or
2 techs it is challenging.
We also work on it by extendign our hours 8a to 8pm, so there are less hours
outside of business hours. (this can be accomplsihed by working 4 long days
a week, or staggering the start time of employees).
Tom DeReggi
RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc
IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband
----- Original Message -----
From: "Clint Ricker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "WISPA General List" <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2007 11:34 AM
Subject: Re: [WISPA] On-Call Compensation
Generally, somewhere around 1 to 2 days pay for each week on call is
typical--it really does depend on what you're paying your employees. Some
guy making $10/hr is different than someone making $80,000.
It also does depend on your company. If you're a small mom and pop shop
and
have a very strong "team" feeling, you may not be able to afford that
premium--and your employees will still be fine "pitching in" for less.
If problems are rare, then 1 day, if occasional, 2 days, and if
frequent...well, you may want to examine infrastructure and/or hire night
shift :) Also, typically there is some sort of comp-time / flexible
scheduling involved here. If not done already, put the investment in
various remote access and remote reboot setups so that, barring needing to
actually replace equipment, everything can be done remotely. Have readily
accessible spares, etc. In other words, make it as easy as possible...
Having too-frequent on-call issues because of whatever will heavily impact
job satisfaction regardless of what you're paying--at some point, money
isn't the issue for most employees.
Honestly, I would err on the side of generous on this if at all possible
just from the standpoint of employee retention. From what I've seen in
the
industry, on-call is a major cause of burnout and job dissatisfaction.
Additionally, because it sometimes directly impacts and interrupts family
/
personal time at unplanned moments, often spouses of employees start
resenting it as well. A lot of companies do have manditory on-call that
is
not (directly) compensated so you aren't necessarily atypical if you don't
directly compensate or you only do a token amount. Just keep in mind that
you will decrease job satisfaction.
-Clint Ricker
Kentnis Technologies
On Nov 14, 2007 12:00 AM, Marlon K. Schafer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
We talked about this lately in my office.
We're talking about $50 if you just pull standby, maybe answer a couple
of
phone calls. $100 if you have to go out or answer more than a couple of
calls.
marlon
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Nash" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "WISPA General List" <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2007 6:40 PM
Subject: [WISPA] On-Call Compensation
> We are wanting to have people be on-call in case of emergencies and for
> telephone tech support at night & on weekends. How do you pay your
people
> for on-call time where they are doing nothing, and how do you then pay
> them when they work during those time periods?
>
> Are there employment rules on this?
>
> Mark Nash
> UnwiredOnline
> 350 Holly Street
> Junction City, OR 97448
> http://www.uwol.net
> 541-998-5555
> 541-998-5599 fax
>
>
>
>
>
>
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