Recovery time
GlossaryWritten by Burak YReviewed by Burak YLast reviewed 3 September 2026
Rest or schedule adjustment provided after disruptive incident work. Recovery time recognises that a responder woken twice at night is not available for a normal working day, and that pretending otherwise moves the cost from the rota into code quality, decision-making and eventually retention.
In practice
A team's policy states that anyone paged between 00:00 and 06:00 starts the next day at midday, with no request needed. The policy works because it removes the need to ask.