Covering the Office While You're On Vacation

How can you take a vacation? You know you need the break, but you also know that any number of things can occur unexpectedly while you're away. Preparation is the key to covering the work and returning to the office refreshed. Following is a ten-point check list that can help you do just that.

1. Call or e-mail your key contacts at least two weeks before you leave. Giving advance notice to clients, vendors, partners, and employees allows them to reach you with any urgent business that needs your attention before you leave.
2. Designate a primary contact person. Your colleagues need to know who's in charge during your absence. This should be someone you can trust to lead and represent you well in the event of a crisis. This person also should know how to reach you in case of an emergency.
3. Make arrangements with coworkers to cover specific tasks. For instance, you'll need to assign someone to handle administrative details and specific projects that may be pending. Ask this coworker to sort your snail mail and put priority items on the top of the stack so that you can get back to your routine faster.
4. Create a list of your employees' work priorities while you are gone. Besides designating the person in charge, you need to establish a list of what tasks and projects you expect your employees to have completed when you return. This sets your agenda, and helps your employees know what is expected of them. It need not be excessively detailed, but it must be clear and manageable.
5. Create a list of your own work priorities for when you return. This will help ease your transition back into the office. Limit this list to short-term tasks-those that need to be done and can get you back into the swing of things.
6. Let technology work for you. Program your email, phone and pager to reply saying you are on vacation and returning on a certain date. Give the name of your interim contact person. Post a note on your extranet, if you have one, with the dates you will be gone, and someone to contact in your absence.
7. Attempt to disengage. Avoid calling the office, and leave your laptop at home. "Just because people have access to each other 24/7, doesn't mean it's healthy," says Hewlett Packard training manager, Brad Utterback. "I'm a big fan of technology, but the whole idea of a vacation is to alter your routine way of doing things so that you reconnect with your family and yourself." In particular, avoid calling during the first 48 hours and the last 48 hours of your vacation. Start and end your vacation on weekends, if possible, to allow for restful buffers.
8. Check in if you must. Not everybody is alike. Some people may be able to relax more if they do check in daily, or periodically. A recent poll of 3,000 workers found that 40 percent stay in touch with the office when on vacation. Twenty-two percent said their employers expect it, according to CareerBuilder Inc., a Reston, Virginia, career web site. If you are relieved after a few days that everything is okay, you may be more inclined to stop calling.
9. Pay important bills before you go. Or at least set up a payment strategy with your employees or coworker while you are gone. Don't leave them in a lurch due to forgetfulness -- or tarnish a valued relationship with a vendor or service provider. Also, leave enough petty cash for your employees to handle unforeseen bills or emergencies.
10. Don't overwork before you leave. You'll end up being too exhausted to enjoy your vacation. Try to add an hour to your day in the weeks leading up to your vacation, to spread your preparations over more time. Put yourself in a position where you can take confidently take a respite from the office because you've covered the work in advance