About Us
When an incident or crisis occurs, it is crucial to quickly have the right personnel available. Essential roles must be deployable immediately. Therefore, on-call services are established for these roles. In this blog, I will discuss on-call services and their implications.
On-call duty refers to the availability of individuals who are ready to respond immediately to incidents or crises. Within crisis management, on-call services (also known as standby duties or consignment services) are therefore arranged for the most critical crisis roles.
Scheduling on-call services involves creating a clear timetable in advance that determines which individuals are on duty and when. This schedule must provide 24/7 coverage, ensuring that expert personnel are always available to respond to emergencies. Depending on the type of role, one or more individuals may be on call simultaneously for a specific role. For instance, it is common to have two loggers on call.
Scheduling on-call services provides clarity and structure. Individuals know in advance when they are responsible and can prepare for their role during their duty.
On-call duty requires 24/7 accessibility and availability from the personnel on duty. You need to be able to reach them, for example, to summon or consult, especially outside office hours. Furthermore, you want to be able to deploy these individuals immediately. Therefore, clear agreements must be made regarding the response time within which on-duty personnel must be deployable. This often means they must have access to a car to quickly reach a location and remain sober during their on-call duty to respond adequately and drive safely.
Flexible on-call duty (also known as soft on-call duty) is a form of on-call service that is not based on a predetermined schedule but is activated on an ad-hoc basis. For flexible on-call duty, a group of suitable individuals is prepared in advance for potential summoning. When individuals are called upon, their availability is requested, and they can indicate whether they are willing to fulfill the requested crisis role at that moment. The summoned person can technically refuse deployment. Therefore, flexible on-call duty is usually not utilized for the most crucial roles within a crisis organization.
An individual on flexible on-call duty is not formally accessible or available, which is why there is usually no compensation for this.
While on-call services are crucial for crisis management, they also present challenges:
