Staff members may or may not choose to take rest periods, but they must be allowed and should be encouraged to take them. They key question is whether the employee is able to effectively use the time for his or her own purposes. As with waiting time, the key question is whether the employee is able to effectively use the time for personal purposes. An employee who is not required to remain on the employer's premises, but is merely required to leave word about where he or she may be contacted, does not constitute working on-call. The employee does not perform any productive work while attending the program or function.
Attendance is in fact voluntary .
The program or function is not directly related to the employee's job. When travel time is integral to performing the employee's job, the time must be treated as work time. When travel time is merely a normal incident of employment, it need not be treated as such. The federal enforcement policy is to ignore time the employee spends as a passenger outside his or her regular working hours. Volunteering Employees frequently voluntarily perform work that is obviously primarily for the benefit of the employer.