TOW#498 — Before going on holiday

Seeing as the summer holiday period has started, it’s a good idea to remember the basic rules of holiday preparation, both for yourselves and your colleagues and collaborators.

1. Notification:

If you know in advance when you’ll be absent from work, then it would be nice to tell everyone that you work with that you won’t be around during that period.

a. Colleagues: send an email to all colleagues telling them when you won’t be at work so that they know.

b. Collaborators: you’ve got two ways:

i. First: during every communication with your regular contacts try to find a way to remind them that you won’t be in the office during a particular period;

ii. Second: insert the dates of your holiday in your digital signature and let it stay that way while you’re out of office.

2. Coordination:

Before leaving, coordinate with the colleagues in your team to avoid overlaps and to make sure that there’s always someone on duty that’ll be able to reply to messages and deal with them properly if necessary.

3. Tasks:

Write down a list of tasks that some of your colleagues will need to take on, but be sure to explain them well. Put it all into one document and share it with all colleagues who need to be involved. In addition, sit down with each of them and go through the responsibilities that you’ll be leaving them. Make sure they’ve understood you well, since it’s nevertheless your communication with your work contacts that they’ll be taking over (if necessary) over a short period. IMPORTANT: If there are some things that don’t need to be told to them, then don’t burden them unnecessarily!

4. Setting your email:

Be sure to set an automated OUT OF OFFICE reply email. If you don’t know how to do this, ask the technical staff at your work to help you. That email should contain information on when you won’t be in the office and on when people can realistically expect a response from you, as well as whether or not they can disturb you while you’re out of office.

5. Work space:

While on holiday, your workplace should be neat and tidy. Only documents that can easily be found by colleagues should be left on the desk. Otherwise don’t complain when you get back that your work space is a total mess because someone must’ve been sitting there or the cleaning service turned it upside down.

6. The day before leaving:

The day before leaving, go to see everyone that you’ve left some tasks with, go once again over the things that they should expect and update them if necessary.

But most important of all, enjoy your holiday, because you’ll need to be well rested when you get back to work!

@kalinbabusku

Member of the Team

“Tip of the Week” Team member

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