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RE: HR Policies for tech work after hours
I hear you and remember those painful times in my life. Being in IT is not like any other profession in an organization. We are expected to troubleshoot at any and all times. I cannot tell you how many times I was stopped either in the hall, at lunch, on a Saturday, or on vacation (for the very few times I was able to take a vacation) for an issue at work.
The issue that I saw was IT is expected to be ready and available all the time. We are in a profession where we do have server upgrades or application upgrades that can only be performed at night or on the weekend. Also, we have no idea of when there will be a problem on the network that will require our immediate attention. So we can end up in a situation of being in the office all day fielding support issues and then waving goodnight to everyone as they go home at 5:00pm knowing that we will be lucky if we can get out of the door before midnight.
Gone are the days of the overstuffed IT departments when we had day crews and night crews. With businesses having acquired the ???do more with less??? mentality we have found IT departments decimated with only a handful of personnel to handle computer issues.
Businesses realize the amount of hours that an IT Professional is capable of doing. This is why most of the jobs out there hire us on as salaried or exempt status employees; because if we were paid by the hour the IT Department would take a much larger share of the company???s payroll budget. This practice has been furthered authorized by some state laws as well; where they have special provisions that designate IT workers to be labeled as exempt employees.
Who is to blame for this? Perhaps IT Management? No, not really, they are in place to ensure that the computer systems and other IT evolutions continue to run smoothly and effectively. Human Resources, no not them either. They are in place to see that the company???s rules and regulations are being followed; at least to the extent of alleviating any legal action. Perhaps, the Executive Level offices can be blamed? No, they are only doing what they have been mandated to do; which is to ensure that the bottom line stays profitable. The only person left would be ourselves to blame then. We tolerate the late night calls, calls while on vacation, calls on the weekend, the countless reconfigurations that are asked for at the oddest of times.
Now you may say ???Now hold on, we have to answer these calls and make sure that we do the jobs whenever and wherever, or we risk losing our jobs???. And you would be very correct. But at the same time we are not indentured servants to the company. We do not have to remain with a company that treats us like this. It is our choice to do this. And if we choose to then we need to be quiet and continue on.
Now some possible solutions; if you have more than just one person in IT. Perhaps you all can work out a rotating shift of who is to be on call. This would require cross-training of course but it something that can be done. If you are able to convince the powers that be to hire a temp worker to fill in for you when you go on vacation that would be great. But keep in mind that you will have to do a lot of extensive training with the person. And keep in mind that you may still receive a lot of calls from your relief while you are away. For the days that you know that you will have either stay really late after work or will have to work over the weekend for a scheduled evolution, perhaps you can take a half day off and return to the office later. One thing I did was to promulgate a policy for when to call the IT person after normal working hours. It designated what constituted a valid call and established times for response. I had to push the policy through the company but in the end it was accepted and signed off on. I did notice a drop in non-emergency calls, they did not go away totally but they did drop off a little.
In the end though I realized that I did not want to have the hours that I did; so I picked up and went out on my own, now I conduct IT Consulting. I like the hours much more and the workload is a lot more manageable. So, you can see that in the end I decided to get out. It took me almost 15 years to finally realize that I was in the wrong job for me.
The issue that I saw was IT is expected to be ready and available all the time. We are in a profession where we do have server upgrades or application upgrades that can only be performed at night or on the weekend. Also, we have no idea of when there will be a problem on the network that will require our immediate attention. So we can end up in a situation of being in the office all day fielding support issues and then waving goodnight to everyone as they go home at 5:00pm knowing that we will be lucky if we can get out of the door before midnight.
Gone are the days of the overstuffed IT departments when we had day crews and night crews. With businesses having acquired the ???do more with less??? mentality we have found IT departments decimated with only a handful of personnel to handle computer issues.
Businesses realize the amount of hours that an IT Professional is capable of doing. This is why most of the jobs out there hire us on as salaried or exempt status employees; because if we were paid by the hour the IT Department would take a much larger share of the company???s payroll budget. This practice has been furthered authorized by some state laws as well; where they have special provisions that designate IT workers to be labeled as exempt employees.
Who is to blame for this? Perhaps IT Management? No, not really, they are in place to ensure that the computer systems and other IT evolutions continue to run smoothly and effectively. Human Resources, no not them either. They are in place to see that the company???s rules and regulations are being followed; at least to the extent of alleviating any legal action. Perhaps, the Executive Level offices can be blamed? No, they are only doing what they have been mandated to do; which is to ensure that the bottom line stays profitable. The only person left would be ourselves to blame then. We tolerate the late night calls, calls while on vacation, calls on the weekend, the countless reconfigurations that are asked for at the oddest of times.
Now you may say ???Now hold on, we have to answer these calls and make sure that we do the jobs whenever and wherever, or we risk losing our jobs???. And you would be very correct. But at the same time we are not indentured servants to the company. We do not have to remain with a company that treats us like this. It is our choice to do this. And if we choose to then we need to be quiet and continue on.
Now some possible solutions; if you have more than just one person in IT. Perhaps you all can work out a rotating shift of who is to be on call. This would require cross-training of course but it something that can be done. If you are able to convince the powers that be to hire a temp worker to fill in for you when you go on vacation that would be great. But keep in mind that you will have to do a lot of extensive training with the person. And keep in mind that you may still receive a lot of calls from your relief while you are away. For the days that you know that you will have either stay really late after work or will have to work over the weekend for a scheduled evolution, perhaps you can take a half day off and return to the office later. One thing I did was to promulgate a policy for when to call the IT person after normal working hours. It designated what constituted a valid call and established times for response. I had to push the policy through the company but in the end it was accepted and signed off on. I did notice a drop in non-emergency calls, they did not go away totally but they did drop off a little.
In the end though I realized that I did not want to have the hours that I did; so I picked up and went out on my own, now I conduct IT Consulting. I like the hours much more and the workload is a lot more manageable. So, you can see that in the end I decided to get out. It took me almost 15 years to finally realize that I was in the wrong job for me.
Posted by exnav29
22nd Jan 2008
