Skip to content

Working & Weekend Hours#

Setting expectations of the time spent at work

Working Hours#

The working week is based off the number of hours per day or per week that an employee is expected to fulfil in the standard working days of Monday to Friday. The workload for a part-time employee is determined as a percentage of the normal working time.

Hours Countries
8 hours per day / 40 hours per week Switzerland, Germany, United Kingdom, South Africa, United States, New Zealand, Italy, The Netherlands
7.7 hours per day / 38.5 hours per week Austria
7.6 hours per day / 38 hours per week Australia

The daily hours includes 2 tea/coffee breaks, generally 10mins each. Lunch break (30-60mins) is not included in the daily hours.

Managing Working Hours

  • Workload expectations are loaded into Jira and assigned to each employee
    • Workload schemes for part-time employees are set up to match their weekly preference (e.g. if at 80% not working on a Friday, or spreading it across the week)
  • The daily hours are also noted in BambooHR for each person

See also

Working in a globally distributed team

Weekend Work#

Saturday and Sunday are the weekend, and they are your weekend. As we allow for a flexible working schedule under the Flexitime concept, we can’t really stop anyone from working on the weekend if they feel inspired. However, we consider all weekend work to be voluntary by default, and thus not eligible for additional weekend compensation. Any hours worked would be included in the standard Flexitime tracking.

There are the rare occasions when some employees are requested to work on a weekend, if the work cannot be executed during normal Monday to Friday hours. When this is the case, the request needs to be in writing and pre-approved in order to get compensated accordingly.

This Weekend Work compensation is given back at 1.5x the hours logged.

We don’t want you to work weekends

Weekends are our private time, and as the name suggests, the working week has ended. With the exception of on-call work, and very very rare exceptions, you will not be asked to work weekends.

If you feel you HAVE to work weekends due to having so much to do, then the issue may be your workload, and on us as a company to solve, rather than you just needing to battle through and give up your own time. Speak up if this is the case, but please don’t work weekends until specifically asked to, or on-call.

Requesting weekend work

  • If you are required to work on a weekend, please send an email to your lead, (or vice versa) and cc hr@amazee.io
    • Please indicate why this work needs to happen on the weekend and the estimated time that will be needed
    • Leads are to acknowledge and approve this prior to the weekend in question
  • Log the time to the relevant ticket(s) in Jira
    • The time actually spent will go towards your general Flexitime balance
    • BizOps will load the additional TOIL supplement into BambooHR for you, after the fact

Note

The onus is on each employee to ensure that the request is sent through and approved, if you expect to get the weekend work compensation.

Flexible working hours and availability#

In general, daily work hours are considered to be between 8AM and 6PM in each employee’s local timezone, and during these hours, employees are generally expected to be logged into Slack and reachable by the team.

However these start and end work times are reasonably flexible, and we offer a lot of autonomy in this area. Where possible, we allow you to choose and manage your own working hours in a way that works for you and the team.

In doing so we can help accommodate colleagues with personal time limitations or responsibilities outside of work, such as carer roles, that of being a parent, or managing ad hoc life events.

It’s important to note that there are some limitations and considerations to take into account when choosing your work hours: 

  • Some roles are time zone dependent. For example, coverage of Platform, Support, Sales etc.
  • We ask that you are available for regular team meetings that may take place, depending on your role. 
  • Long term changes in your schedule are to be agreed with your Lead.
  • Work is performed to a high standard and deadlines met.
  • As a fully remote and globally distributed company, it may sometimes be required that you attend meetings or be otherwise available outside of your preferred working hours.

Setting up Flexible working hours

  • Speak to your lead about a schedule that can work for you and the team

  • Once agreed, update your Google calendar to reflect your work schedule

  • If your absence is ad hoc (Dr’s visit, family emergency etc.), notify the team of you being away via the #amazeeio-team slack channel

On-Call (PagerDuty)#

Team members who are on weekend call for support are planned in a roster and linked on PagerDuty. The schedule is aimed at having 2 weekends on, 4 weekends off - depending on the people available.

On-call time is compensated in two ways:

  • Base hours
  • Weekend Work hours

Base hours: For every 4 days on a weekend shift, you get 1 full day back. So for each weekend day that you are on shift, 0.25 days will be loaded into BambooHR for you. Ideally the extra day gained for 2 weekend shifts are used up before your next cycle of shifts begins.

Weekend Work hours: The time actually worked on those days should be logged as normal, and these hours will go towards your Flexitime balance. As these hours were worked on a weekend, the TOIL supplement will be added to BambooHR by BizOps at the end of the month. The hours logged will be reviewed by the Lead to verify that it was all on-call work, and not voluntary time spent.

The above applies to both the primary and secondary responders on duty (as of 1 July 2023).

Example

  • 2 Days on Call (Saturday/Sunday) = 2 x 0.25 Days = 4hr will be added to BambooHR
  • Work done to debug and fix something on that weekend = 2hr
    • Logged in Jira towards IOO-4 - Getting issue details... STATUS
    • Which will then count towards your Flexitime
  • Additional Weekend Work Compensation = 1hr
  • Total for the Weekend = 0.5 Days (4hr) + (2hr * 1.5) = 7 hours (Based on an 8hr working day)

We fully appreciate that you make yourself available to be on-call over the weekend and understand that you may need to adjust social plans to accommodate for this. We do also want to you make the most of your weekend, as such if any of the work can be deferred to APAC’s Monday morning, please do so. In other words, when reacting to PD calls, solve the problem, push any follow-up tasks to the working week, and enjoy the weekend.

Note

Using On-Call (PagerDuty) Hours

  • Hours will be loaded into BambooHR once a month on your behalf
  • Time to be requested off in BambooHR and the standard OoO procedures followed.
  • Use Jira ticket: IOO-19 - Getting issue details... STATUS
  • Plan the time on Jira in advance, and log the time on your return

Business Continuity Plan

As the on-call rotation is a core piece of our SLA with our clients, we need to ensure this is covered in all circumstances.

On rare occasions when the team is understaffed (e.g. due to sudden illness, or a team member leaving), amazee.io may need to allocate on-call shifts that are not during a person’s normal daytime working hours. Additional compensation is paid out for these out-of-timezone shifts, along with the standard hour compensation.

The additional /ph rates are:

CHF 30 AUD 45 EUR 30 NZD 50 ZAR 550

This will be paid out in the next month’s salary under overtime, and may be subject to local taxation.

(This is valid as of May 2024)