Term
Standby duty
Time outside the scheduled hours when an employee is ready to be called in. Inactive hours are paid at a rate derived from the minimum hourly wage, while a call-out actually worked counts as overtime.
Updated
What it means
Standby duty is time outside scheduled working time during which the employee is ready to start work. It may be ordered only in justified cases, to secure tasks that cannot wait, and the law caps how much can be ordered without the employee agreeing to it.
It splits by whether the employee waits at the workplace or away from it, and into an active and an inactive part. Inactive standby at the workplace counts as working time, standby away from it does not, which is why the two are paid differently.
Standby does not arise just because an employee is occasionally reachable by phone. What counts is an order or agreement with the employer and whether the employee must be ready to start work at set times, usually within an agreed response time. The rules for ordering it are best laid down in the works rules or the contract.
How it works in practice
The active part, the hours actually worked, is performance of work: beyond scheduled hours it is overtime with everything that follows. Inactive hours carry a payment derived from the minimum hourly wage, higher at the workplace than away from it.
The attendance records keep three figures apart: inactive hours at the workplace, inactive hours away from it, and the hours genuinely worked on a call-out. If someone is called in at night the uninterrupted rest breaks and the next shift has to be rescheduled.
An IT company that promises customers support outside working hours in its SLA needs ordered and paid standby of specific people behind it. When setting up payroll we therefore compare the duty roster with the customer contracts, so the availability promised has a footing in employment law.
What to watch out for
A company keeps a technician on the phone every other weekend, orders no standby anywhere and pays nothing for it. An inspection or a dispute reclassifies those weekends, and the payment for every inactive hour plus the call-out supplements has to be settled retrospectively, with levies and default interest on top.
The Labour Code does not allow standby to be ordered beyond the statutory extent without the employee’s agreement. The labour inspectorate can fine the company for it even if every hour was properly paid, and a tired technician on a night call-out is a safety risk besides.
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