Requesting staff to cover out of hours support

[SoloD]

Our company has grown very quickly and we need some of the older (as in having been with the company for longer) staff to deal with the occasional out of hours issue.

There is a flexibility clause on their contracts, but I want to implement as fairly as possible.

Does anyone have examples of were out of hours support practice works well?

Are you going to either pay them for the extra hour of offer time off in lieu? If so I'm sure you'll get people on board easily.

If you want to simply add it to their existing duties for no extra I should imagine they will object - I would!

What does the flexibility clause say? How flexible and what would it require. If it’s already expected that there should be flexibility, what did you envisage when you issued the contracts?

Flex clause just says we can alter the hours when needed.

New contracts allow for out of hours support.

I mean it happens perhaps once a month, typically 10-15 job to fix something, so on average one person might get 1 or 2 out of hours support calls a year.

It's blown up because the two devs who we needed were both on old contracts and did not respond to message from the MD on a problem one of them had created in the first place.

I am trying to do this as tactfully as possible, but I am a bit annoyed, having let them leave early on a number of occasions.

I think you could alter their hours when needed then. So if there is a non standard call out they can be called upon because it’s altering hours when needed. Time off in lieu might be agreed by them. I would talk to them and explain what the contract means and that a degree of flexibility is required. If an employee has caused an issue, you need to discuss that with them too. What went wrong, why and how to prevent it in the future. Do they need more training? Do you offer a bonus for good performance? How do you measure that? Do you have interim permit hence meetings? Team meetings? See how you can move them round to accept what the contract says because I think you are not being unreasonable.

Performance meetings - should have proof read!

for our staff, we do an on call payment for the week (to relflect they need to be close to a laptop/no drunk for the rime they are on call)

And then extra payments/time off in lieu for any actual calls.

We're covered as burntoutbabe's place. Payment to cover being on call, then payment for any actual call, plus overtime or TOIL for any time worked over 30 minutes. Planned OOH work is usually TOIL, but in certain cases, OT payments can be agreed in advance.