Handing Over For Holidays

Brightwater

• stress-free holidays
• Holiday handover
• annual leave
• Mental Health

Doing a handover at work pre-holiday ensures you're not interrupted on your well deserved annual leave and your colleagues can easily manage your workload and clients.

With in-door dining finally open again this week, many people have decided to kick off their summer holidays this August Bank Holiday weekend. Whether it’s a staycation or if you’re travelling abroad with your Digital Covid Certificate, it’s time to finally relax!  And why not take advantage of a four- day week to gain an extra day’s annual leave? But spare a thought for your colleagues, the ones who you’ve waved goodbye to merrily over MS Teams or Zoom. Have you left them enough information to manage your workload while you’re away? Or are you going to come back to chaos?

We can’t stress enough the importance of a detailed handover to your colleagues in advance of your annual leave. If you all work off a central database, take the time to ensure that all relevant information is updated on the system so that’s easily accessible. This means that in your absence, your colleagues can still continue to look after your clients and your workload without any interruption to service.

From your own perspective, you want to be able to relax on your holidays without getting increasingly frantic phone calls from the office. After the last 17 months or so of a global pandemic, people are at more of a risk of burnout than ever. It does take a couple of days to switch off at the start of your annual leave so you need to be able to fully relax. A detailed handover given in plenty of time will mean a stress free holiday for both you and your colleagues.

When handing over to your team/manager, keep the following points in mind:

• Deadlines to be adhered to
• Main projects /deliverables
• Contact numbers for all involved – clients, colleagues, suppliers
• Any decisions to be taken/followed up on and your own recommendations on each
• Access to passwords/systems/files
• Hand over keys to safes/office premises / vehicles if necessary
• Put your Out of Office auto reply on your email detailing the relevant contacts in your absence and your expected date of return
• Update your voice mail on your direct line
• Advise your clients that you’ll be away for a specific period of time and who will be their point of contact – it’s only courtesy

 Once the handover is done, take a deep breath, switch off your computer and don’t look back! Have a fabulous holiday knowing your workload and clients are in the safe hands of your colleagues!