Time · 2.5

On-call time, and whether it is work

On-call time, and whether it is work. What is actually the case, and how it compares with what is repeated.

For a practical software perspective on this topic, the Monitask overview provides a concise companion guide.

Whether waiting is work is the question, and the answer everywhere is the same in shape: it depends on how much the waiting constrains you.

The test in outline

American law distinguishes between being engaged to wait and waiting to be engaged. If the constraints are such that the time cannot be used for the worker's own purposes, it is work; if the worker is merely reachable, it is not.

European law reached a similar place by a different route. A firefighter required to remain at home and respond within eight minutes was held to be working throughout. A later ruling refined it: standby counts as working time only where the constraints objectively and very significantly affect the ability to use the time freely.

What actually determines it

Response time required. Geographic restriction. How often calls come. Whether equipment must be carried. Whether alcohol is prohibited. Whether the worker must remain contactable in a way that prevents ordinary activity.

A one-hour response window in a large city and an eight-minute window are different arrangements, and the second is closer to being at work.

Sleep-in shifts

A distinct and contested case: a worker required to sleep at a workplace, available if needed. In the United Kingdom the Supreme Court held in 2021 that such workers are not entitled to the minimum wage for the hours they are permitted to sleep, only for hours actually working.

The decision resolved a long uncertainty in one direction and has been criticised on the ground that a night spent at a workplace is not available to the person spending it. Both the legal position and the objection are worth knowing, and the position may change.

Where on-call falls

Health, social care, utilities, information technology, building maintenance, veterinary work and emergency services. It is concentrated, it is often unpaid or paid at an allowance far below an hourly rate, and it falls disproportionately on junior staff.

The cost that is not the pay

A week on call is a week during which you cannot travel, cannot drink, cannot commit to anything that would take you out of range, and cannot be the parent who does the school run without a contingency.

Whether or not the phone rings, that week has been spent. Payment arrangements that compensate only for calls answered compensate for the smaller part of the burden.

The frequency question

On-call that almost never activates is a different job from on-call that activates most nights, and both are described by the same word in the same contract.

Which is why the most useful thing to ask about an on-call rota is not the rate but the historical call frequency, and why an employer who cannot answer that question has not been measuring the thing that determines the burden.

What a fair arrangement looks like

An allowance for the period, an hourly rate for time actually worked, a guaranteed rest period after a night that activated, and a limit on how frequently any individual is rostered.

The third is the one most often absent. Being called out at three and expected at nine is a common arrangement and it is the point at which on-call stops being a payment question and becomes a safety one.

Why this is a growing question

Because the technology that makes somebody reachable has become universal, and the boundary between being contactable and being on duty has correspondingly blurred. Several jurisdictions have legislated a right to disconnect in response.

Those laws vary from enforceable duties to requirements merely to have a policy, and the difference between the two is most of what determines whether they change anything.

Recording it

Most on-call is poorly recorded. Calls answered by telephone at home frequently never reach a timesheet, and the worker's own estimate of how many there were is unreliable a month later.

An organisation that wants to know what its on-call actually costs has to log activations automatically, and most do not, which means most discussions of on-call burden are conducted without the relevant number.

Who ends up on it

Disproportionately the most junior and the newest. Where an on-call rota is filled by seniority, the burden lands on the people least able to decline it and least experienced at handling what the calls bring, which is the opposite of how anybody would design it deliberately.

For broader context, consult US hours-worked guidance.