After-hours calls, without burning out the team

Most out-of-hours calls are not emergencies. They are problems that felt urgent to the person who found them at nine at night. Sorting the two out costs nothing and is the difference between an on-call rota people will do and one that drives good technicians away.

Define an emergency in writing, and publish it

Not a judgement call at midnight. A short list, agreed in daylight, that anybody can apply.

• •A risk to somebody’s safety
• •Water or fire, active and spreading
• •Loss of heating or power to an occupied building
• •A security failure that leaves the building open
• •A failure that will destroy stock, equipment or a research sample

Everything else waits for the morning. Put the list where people call from, and the number of three-in-the-morning callouts drops without anybody having to refuse one.

One number, and a person who triages

Calls that go to whoever answers produce a different outcome each time. One number, one rota, and one person deciding whether it meets the definition. That person should have the authority to say "tomorrow" and be backed when they do.

Record it at the time, in one minute

An out-of-hours job written up on Monday is written from memory and usually skipped. The record from a call needs four things and can be captured on a phone in the van: where, what was found, what was done, and whether anything still needs doing in daylight.

That last one is the important part. The follow-up work created at two in the morning is the most commonly lost work in facilities management.

Make the rota fair and visible

• •Published a quarter ahead, not a week
• •Everybody in the rotation, including supervisors
• •Paid or given back in time, clearly, not as a favour
• •A hard rule about not working the next morning after a night callout

Review the calls monthly

Sort last month’s out-of-hours calls by cause. A third of them will usually trace to two or three pieces of equipment or one recurring situation. Fixing those is how you get the nights back, and it is invisible unless somebody counts.