Sort the sick tech's jobs by how badly each one hurts if it moves, place the worst first with the nearest qualified tech who has room, and call every customer you can't cover before they start waiting. Do it within 30 minutes of the call, because every hour you wait shrinks the open time left to absorb the work.
A sick call is not really about the sick tech. It is about the four to six jobs sitting on their row, and the fact that the rest of the board was already planned full. The order you work in decides how many of those jobs you save.
Step 1: sort the jobs by cost of moving
Pull every job on the sick tech's day and rank them. A simple order that works for most trades:
- No-heat, no-water, no-power and other true emergencies. These go somewhere today, even if it costs overtime.
- Jobs where the customer took time off work or a crew is waiting on you (a GC, a property manager, a second trade).
- Paid or deposit-backed installs, where moving costs you a slot that was hard to sell.
- Maintenance visits, estimates and follow-ups. These move with the least damage.
Write the list down. Under pressure, dispatchers tend to work the jobs in time order, which means the 8 a.m. tune-up gets saved while the 1 p.m. no-heat call waits.
Step 2: find the real open time
Your spare capacity is not "everyone else's day." It is the gaps that a tech can actually reach. A gap of 90 minutes across town is worth less than a gap of 60 minutes next door, because the drive eats the difference.
On a normal booked day, the rest of the board can usually take two of the sick tech's jobs, not five. That number tells you, in the first ten minutes, how many customer calls you need to make. If your booked utilization runs above 85%, assume it is fewer.
Step 3: place the top jobs, in order
Go down your ranked list. For each job, look for the tech who:
- has the skill and the parts on the truck,
- has a gap that fits the job plus the drive from wherever they will be before it, not from the shop,
- would not push a later customer outside their window.
This is where technician workload balancing matters. Piling three extra jobs onto your fastest tech saves the morning and blows up their afternoon. Spreading one job each over three techs costs more drive but keeps every row intact.
If no one in-house can make it, a trusted partner company or a 1099 tech can. Subcontractor scheduling covers how that works when you only see the partner's open time.
Step 4: call the rest before they wait
Every job you cannot place should get a phone call or text before the tech would have left the shop. A customer told at 7:30 a.m. that you need to move them is annoyed. A customer who waits until noon and then hears it is lost.
Offer two specific times, not "we'll call you." The first open slot often isn't the best one to offer; the one that sits next to other work in their part of town is cheaper to run. See field service customer communication for the wording.
If you run CrewLink, moving a job sends the customer a text automatically, and the same-day emergency search finds a qualified tech who can still get there today, or says why no one can.
Step 5: protect tomorrow
The jobs you pushed land on tomorrow's board, which was also planned full. If you drop them into the first open time without thinking, the sick day becomes a sick week. Spread the moved jobs over two or three days, and hold back some capacity in your capacity planning for exactly this.
A useful rule: if your crew averages one sick day per tech every two months, a 10-tech company loses about one tech-day a week. Plan roughly that much slack into the week, or accept that every sick call becomes a cascade.
What about pay and sick leave rules?
Whether the sick tech is paid for the day depends on your policy and where you operate. The U.S. Department of Labor says there are no federal legal requirements for paid sick leave for private employers, but a number of states and cities do require it, and FMLA unpaid leave can apply to larger employers (as of October 2026). Rules vary by state and city, so check with your state labor department or an employment attorney before you write a policy.
What to take away
- Rank the sick tech's jobs by the cost of moving them, not by start time.
- Real spare capacity is reachable gaps minus drive: J × (job length + D) against T × G.
- Spread inserted jobs across several techs so no one row collapses in the afternoon.
- Call every customer you can't cover before the tech would have left the shop, with two specific times.
- Spread moved jobs over several days so one sick day doesn't become a sick week.
Common questions
How many of a sick tech's jobs can the rest of the crew absorb?
Usually fewer than you hope. Add up the open minutes the other techs actually have today, then divide by the job length plus the extra drive each inserted job adds. On a full board that is often two jobs out of five or six.
Should I call customers or wait to see if I can fit them in?
Call the ones that clearly won't fit as soon as the arithmetic says so. Waiting costs the customer their morning and costs you the job. Keep the jobs you are still trying to place on a short list and call those by mid-morning either way.
Is it better to pay overtime or reschedule?
For emergencies and jobs where the customer took time off, overtime is often cheaper than losing the customer. For maintenance and estimates, rescheduling usually wins. Use the overtime cost calculator with your own rates to see where the line sits.
How do I reduce the damage of sick calls in general?
Keep a little planned slack each week, cross-train so more than one tech can do each job type, and line up a partner company or 1099 tech you trust before you need one.