[sokoloff]

We also gave comp time for significant disruptions/outages, but that was mostly recognition of the practical reality that someone who normally worked days and unexpectedly worked 1-4 AM responding to the pager was going to be useless the next day anyway.

I specifically wanted to avoid variable pay, the associated timesheets tracking and approval processes, the HR and finance/payroll integration, and any temptation (beyond normal professional responsibility) to either decrease or increase the hours spent on a problem response. I'm sure it's different for different businesses, but I judged that paying on-call bonuses for weeks on-call quarterly was low enough finance integration effort and still gave the employees a sense that they were being paid some differential for being on-call.

Your last sentence is the key outcome to strive for and as long as you have decent leadership and culture, I think that's fairly easy to achieve in a small group. I don't need to be paid "extra" to do a little extra to help my team and company.