Navigating On-Call rotations can often feel like taming a storm of alerts and constant disruptions, leaving teams overwhelmed and stressed. Hence there is a need to streamline On-Call rotations and leverage concerned software to restore order and peace. In this guide, you’ll explore practical tips, best practices, and smart strategies to transform your Incident Management process. Let’s get to a more efficient On-Call experience.
What is On-Call rotation?
An On-Call rotation is when team members take turns being available during business and non-business hours to handle urgent issues, incidents or emergencies. They need to respond quickly to any problems that may come up, ensuring that services run smoothly even during off-hours. On-Call rotation is common in but not limited to IT, healthcare, and customer support industries, where continuous service is essential for success.
On-Call rotation aims to avoid any unforeseen major incident or tackle them before they escalate to something serious and result in SLAviolations. So, it’s the first step towards ensuring customer satisfaction & reliability.
With a diverse user base spanning across different time zones, some organizations would need a solution to ensure 24/7 support without causing burnout. Having ‘follow the sun’ schedule for an On-Call would help address the requirement. It is a strategy that ensures round-the-clock coverage and support for customers or clients in different time zones.
This arrangement involves scheduling On-Call responsibilities based on the working hours of different regions.
For example, if your company operates in multiple locations globally, you could divide the On-Call duties into three shifts: Americas, Europe/Africa, and Asia/Pacific.
The America shift would cover the working hours in North and South America, while the Europe/Africa shift would handle the European and African time zones, and the Asia/Pacific shift would take care of the working hours in Asia and the Pacific region.
This schedule helps ensure that there is always someone available On-Call. Here is a case study demonstrating flexible scheduling implementation by Klever’s On-Call team.
They’ve efficiently organized their on-call team into squads responsible for specific regions and time zones. Team members can set their preferred On-Call slots, enabling a fair distribution of responsibilities and a healthier work-life balance.
Key challenges in On-Call rotations
1. Stress & burnout causing improper work-life balance
Being constantly available and dealing with critical incidents can cause high stress and burnout among On-Call personnel. Poorly designed On-Call rotations can lead to sleep deprivation, anxiety & reduced productivity.