When a coworker gets sick or has an emergency, you might need an on-call employee to fill in for the day. Since emergencies happen suddenly, and with little time to prepare, one of the easiest ways to make sure you can find a fast replacement is to have a go-to on-call list already prepared. If you have a simple on-call scheduler, online through an answering service, you can save time making blind phone calls.

You can program this list so that it only displays people in your network who are available at the times you need. This information could include a contact phone number, as well as an email address, to ensure that you are able to reach the person you need in a timely manner.

Rather than trying to remember who is on-call at any given moment, and having to hunt down their phone numbers to find out if they can come in to work, you can have everything you need at your fingertips. These schedulers can change as your company changes. For example, if one of your coworkers decides to change the days she is on-call, you can make this change in the scheduler with only a few steps. The scheduler can also show you who is already working on the on-call list, so you do not waste time calling people who are unavailable.

If you are a clinic working with a medical call center, you could benefit from having an on-call scheduler online, due to the high demands on nurses and doctors in the medical field. When one of your doctors has to leave her shift for the day, you can call in an alternate, based on the times other doctors give you. This saves you time, trying to call doctors who are unavailable to come in, and will make your clinic more professional and streamlined.