Pay for out of hours and on-call work
November 2006
‘Predictable’ out of hours and emergency work
Under the terms of the new contract, all emergency work that takes place at regular and predictable times will be programmed into the working week on a prospective basis and count towards programmed activities. All time spent on either a full shift or on-call between 7pm at night and 7am in the morning and between 7pm on a Friday night and 7am on a Monday morning will be paid at time and a third (this would generally mean that a PA scheduled during these hours would last for three hours rather than for four).
You will need to keep a diary to ensure that your predictable out of hours work is correctly estimated in your job plan. A diary should be kept to record hours of work to be averaged out over a period of time. It is recommended that your diary for job planning purposes is kept over a three month reference period.
‘Unpredictable’ on call work
For doctors working an on-call rota (rather than a full shift arrangement), emergency work that it is not possible to predict for the purposes of job planning will be remunerated via an on–call supplement which is calculated as a percentage of basic pay. The supplement is payable depending on the frequency of on call duties:
- more frequent than or equal to 1 in 4 = 6%
- less frequent than 1 in 4 or equal to 1 in 8 = 4%
- less frequent than 1 in 8 = 2%
In order to ensure that you are paid this supplement for all the actual work (i.e. any time that you are not resting and are undertaking work for your employer) you undertake during your time spent on call, you will need to keep a record of all the time worked during this period.
In order to establish how much time you spend actually working during your on-call period you will need to count how much time you spend undertaking the following:
- being at your place of work in preparation for or undertaking job activities.
- travelling between home and hospital or between hospitals (and the return journey)
- giving telephone advice
- undertaking administrative work arising from advice given/work undertaken while on call.
Time spent actually working while on call should then be counted up and averaged out over the whole of the diary period.
Short spells of work out of hours will either be aggregated or treated as a continuous period subject to local agreement.
Please note, if you are working continuously during an on-call period, then this may be deemed a shift by your employer. Such a shift will not attract a supplement on top of the time and a third payment.