On-call schedules

An on-call schedule is a way of scheduling staff so that a business or organisation is able to respond to sudden changes in demand and remain adequately staffed.

On-call schedules are often used in sectors such as healthcare (e.g. emergency on-call staff) but are also common in care homes, utility companies, IT providers, and night-time security firms.

On-call staff are typically needed:

• to respond in the event of an emergency
• to ensure that a minimum number of skilled or qualified staff are on site
• to respond to a sudden increase in customer demand

In addition to having a method of reliably contacting an on-call member of your team, as a manager you’ll also need to ensure that your staff know when they’re on-call and can check their work schedule freely.

Modern staff scheduling platforms like RotaCloud allow staff to access their work rota anytime, day or night, via their web browser or mobile app. Any changes made to the schedule are also communicated to staff via push, SMS, or email notification, and can be set to require acknowledgement from employees so that their managers know they’ve seen the schedule.