Working out of normal hours

Hi Jenny, globally you are on the right track. Future conditions for new startes will have to include this requirement (and any associated payments) and you will have to consult with existing staff to bring about modifications to existing contracts. Most IT people understand that providing 24 hours cover is necessary (lost of upgrades/migrations run overnight for example) - but you will still need to give them a convincing explanation for what has changed to necessitate the change now.

Work closely with your IT manager in identifying the skills profiles that will be required and the frequency of cover that staff will have to give. Equally, consult with the US team to understand the expecations so as to be able to appropriately calibrate the coverage. 

In these situations you have two types of activity to compensate:

• standby/on-call, when the person has to be available and maybe handle a problem from home by logging in remotely, or by phone;
• call-out, when the person needs to be physically present in the office (machine has died and physically needs rebooting for example)

You can roll these up into a single payment if call-outs are rare or problems can be solved remotely in a very short time:; alternatively if call-outs are likely to be frequent, you may want to make additional payments for this aspect. Model these in simulations using the assumptions that your IT team should supply -  if you don't you can end up paying lots of money for people who are never called, or alternatively receiving lots of complaints from people who don't think they are adequately compensated for frequent call-outs.

Ray