Beeper Pay
Rockie
2,136 Posts
Those of you who utilize on call people who have to carry a beeper....what do you pay them per hour? Trying to get some info on this for our medical practice.
Thanks
Thanks
Comments
Can you elaborate on your beeper keepers?
We have our maintenance workers take turns being on call evenings and weekends since we are a 24-hr. facility but don't have maintenance regularly scheduled except for M-F, 7am-4 pm. They carry a cell phone or a pager and are required to come to the school if there's a maintenance problem. Otherwise, we give them comp time on a hour-for-hour basis for the time spent on call.
As mentioned by others, the question is how restricted is the employee? If the employee cannot travel too far from home because there is an expectation that, if called, the employee will report to work within a certain time frame (for example 30 minutes), than the employee is on standby and would receive compensation. On the other hand, if the employee has no restrictions placed on him/her and has no obligation to respond to the call, then we would not compensate the employee (unless he/she is actually called in to work).
On holidays we also have paid double time plus the regular holiday pay for these happenings.
Our EXEMPTS peeper employees are paid for 24/7 in their salary and a kick in the butt should they fail to respond to a beeper situation.
PORK
Do you actually do a 'kick in the butt' or is just the threat of it enough?
If the threat of it is enough, I would like to implement that throughout all of my policies at my company. Instead of progressive discipline, a good kick in the butt will suffice!
We have two clinical people in house who work in the same department. They are only the only ones certified to shoot a chest x-ray on our clinical floor. This is in the same building. These individuals feel they should be compensated if they are pulled away from their department to shoot an x-ray (which takes a few minutes). They came up with a proposal to charge per hour to carry a beeper (even though they are here on site). The amount they came up with was $3.50/hour when they were on call to shoot x-rays. I thought this amount was ridiculous and really,the entire situation was crazy. I feel if an employee is at work and being paid their salary, they should float to another area and do whatever it takes to get the job done.
This situation,thankfully, is being remedied with some new hires to replace departing employees. These individuals do have the x-ray certification and will be able to perform this function.
I agree that if the employee is at work, there should not be additional pay if the employee is called upon for some special tasks. However, in my world - a public employer with several unions - it is quite common for employees to receive premium pay for performing special duties. Usually, premiums are paid when the extra work presents risk (such as hazmat duties)or more than a minor inconvenience (such as changing the employee's shift without sufficient notice). However, I would not voluntarily agree to begin paying premiums as a general practice.
PORK
Is there a way to write the x-ray duties into the job description for these ee's? I assume you have the old "all other duties as assigned" catch all that would cover this as well.
I would be uncomfortable entering the arena of paying ee's extra money to do "certain tasks" while they are already on duty.
For example, in addition to my duties as HR manager, I happen to be our webmaster. Why? Because I can. I don't ask to be paid additional money for the time I spend making changes to our website.
The appropriate response for these employees would have this specialized skill would be to ask for a raise, not additional money for time spent carrying a beeper.
Sometimes our assistant book keeper fixes the copy machine. She is the only here that understands that beast. Should we pay her $15 every time she removes a jammed copy?