I have 2 employees scheduled for each shift on weekends. When one of them is sick, we call around to see if anyone else can/wants to cover, and if not then I go in.

When I’m out of town, or have stuff going on, I’d like to have someone be “on call”, where they go in if needed with a couple of hours notice. I don’t want to have to worry that everyone is unavailable.

From what I see of labor laws, I’m not required to pay for their time if they’re not called in. If they are, I would pay them for the whole shift.

I’m not planning to mandate when people are on call (or even if they are on call at all). Rather I’m planning to ask for people to voluntarily sign up to be on call of a particular day in exchange for some amount of money. I’m thinking of a flat amount per day of on-call (and pay if you’re called in, of course).

Wage-wise this is a retail-type job.

Is this a good approach? Is there something better? How much should that on-call pay be?

I’m not sure if I would do it every weekend or just if I have something going on where I can’t or don’t want to be backup.

Thanks!