On-call duty: what is it?
This is the period during which an employee is made available to your company, permanently and immediately! If he is not necessarily physically present at the place within the company, he must be able to intervene as quickly as possible in order to accomplish his mission in his workplace. For example, their home should be located close to your business.
Such a system has many advantages, including the following:
- Availability of employees in case of emergency.
- No use of subcontracting (and therefore savings).
- Business continuity of your company/company.
On-call duty: how to set it up
First of all, it would be wise to specify that on-call duty can only be set up within a company that requires continuity, such as a maintenance company. Then, it will be necessary to find out about the applicable collective agreements and about the company/establishment agreements. Procedures may be provided for setting up on-call duty (night work, maximum duration, minimum duration, compensatory rest, weekly rest, holidays, etc.). All you have to do is apply, according to the labor code, what is mentioned therein, while not neglecting the favors requested by the employee in question.
If there are no terms, you have two options:
- Precise weekly hours of on-call duty mentioned in the employment contract (collective agreement) signed with the employee.
- Or maximum hours of on-call duty, decided unilaterally by the employer.
In both cases, it will be necessary to have the employee’s agreement.
GOOD TO KNOW 😀 the employee on call must be informed of the individual scheduling of on-call periods, by any dated means, at least 15 days in advance, except in exceptional circumstances, in these cases the employees must be notified at least one clear day in advance (Art. L 3121-9 and R 3121-3).
How are on-call periods paid?
When an employee is on call, he or she receives compensation in the form of financial or rest for being on call, but also remuneration for his or her intervention time.
The duration of this intervention is considered as effective working time and is therefore remunerated (an on-call allowance may be negotiated).
On-call duty: getting organised by taking a step-by-step approach
The first thing to do is to fix all the functions concerned. Then, organize the schedules of your employees who are affected by the on-call duty, as well as the method of notice. Thirdly, you will need to plan for all the resources that are made available to your employee during the intervention. Then, set out the obligations in relation to the employee during the on-call period. The fifth step is to determine how the interventions are triggered: phone call, alarm, etc. Finally, it will be necessary to establish the annual number, as well as the frequency of the on-call duty per employee.
To organise the management of your on-call duties, more quickly and simply, eBrigade offers you its digital management tool used by the fire brigade since 2004.
On-call duty: coordinating intervention time, rest time
All intervention time, according to the collective agreement or a collective agreement, is considered to be “effective working time”. In short, if your employee works for a 35-hour week, the on-call hours are considered “overtime”. Additional costs will therefore have to be taken into account. Most of the remaining time is a waiting time. In return, a lump sum compensation will have to be considered.
GOOD TO KNOW : If the employee is called upon to intervene, the rest hours are reset to zero. Thus, if he or she is on call between 4 p.m. and 8 a.m. and intervenes between 8 and 11 p.m., the 3 hours worked will have to be taken into account, but also the 11 hours of mandatory rest. He must therefore not deviate from the rule and return to his position before 10 hours of rest.
On-call duty: good follow-up
Regular monitoring of on-call duty must be carried out:
- Waiting time: count the hours of on-call duty during which the employee did not intervene. This will allow you to set the compensation.
- Intervention time: count the hours during which the worker has performed interventions as “normal” working hours.
- Daily rest time: the minimum and weekly 11 consecutive hours of rest (35 consecutive hours) must be taken into account.
It is therefore a rather rigorous and complex job. To help you keep track of your on-call duties, and thus better manage your activity, do not hesitate to test eBrigade by downloading the web application here.
Need a demo?
Let our product experts guide you and discover how eBrigade can revolutionize the way you run your business.
