There are bound to be periods of time, especially in the summer, when a lot of your employees are on vacation or otherwise out of the office. While this is expected, it is still something that needs to be planned ahead for to ensure that everything that needs to get done still gets done.
If you are too short-staffed, work can start to pile up, and you may need to decide to implement some new rules regarding out of office (OOO) time and the preparation leading up to it. To help you figure out what’s best for your company, we’ve asked 13 experts from Forbes Agency Council to share their advice for managing employees’ work when they’re gone.
Forbes Agency Council members offer strategies for managing the daily workload when staff is out on vacation.
Photos courtesy of the individual members.
1. Always Stay Organized
If you are disciplined daily and organized, you are ready to hand over files to others to manage or take on items to cover for others. At iMPR we have an OOO document organized by client, contacts, projects, and links. This document is shared with a team assigned to look after the various initiatives in motion so it does not bog down any one individual. – Ilissa Miller, IMiller Public Relations
2. Prepare Reliable Freelancers Ahead Of Time
You may find your business normally dips in the summer months, and your staff naturally wants more time off. That’s great, but you’ll still need to be prepared with coverage if work ramps up. If you don’t already have a stable and reliable group of freelancers at your disposal, then start bringing in extra help in the spring. This will help you identify keepers that you want to put on speed dial. – Kenny Eicher, The CSI Group
3. Use A Task Management Tool
Our team uses the task management program Asana every day. You can set recurring tasks for things that need to be done daily, weekly or monthly and you can create one-off tasks and organize everything under a project umbrella. When employees are on vacation, it’s easy to reassign tasks to other employees managing work while they’re out. This ensures nothing falls through the cracks. – Leila Lewis, Be Inspired PR
4. Be Proactive And Flexible
People can be reactionary in management, but I prefer to be proactive by creating a culture that prioritizes personal accountability. No one likes a micromanager, and we give our team members the flexibility to get their work done at home or the office and trust them to meet their deadlines. When teams have the freedom to make their own choices, they are more productive, engaged and happier. – Scott Harkey, OH Partners
5. Use Your Agency For Backup
It’s challenging to hand off long-tail programs such as thought leadership, public relations, content marketing and social media engagement to contractors, assistants or interns. Fall back on the team that you worked with to get there—your agency. They can likely provide a flexible budget for summertime coverage, and they have deep knowledge of all the moving parts to keep up the velocity. – Serenity Thompson, A23 Advisors
6. Be Transparent And Collaborate
We have a channel within which all company employees see everyone’s scheduled vacation time, including management; this helps with transparency and internal workflow distribution. This transparency allows employees to collaborate and take care of the priorities and hard deadlines before they leave for their time off and allows management to distribute the tasks evenly with achievable deadlines. – Ally Spinu, USA Link System
7. Utilize Automation
Take advantage of your own marketing automation by setting up email auto-responses and message forwarding to the appropriate team members. If you work with clients, be sure to get organized and let them know if they’ll be hearing from someone new in the interim. Prepare, plan and prosper, no matter who’s out of the office. – Bernard May, National Positions
8. Build A Team Atmosphere
Employees who have little connection to one another look at covering someone else’s work while they’re on vacation as a burden. Those who feel the camaraderie with their co-workers see it more as doing a favor for a friend. Build a team atmosphere, where we’re all in it together and everyone gets a real chance to get away, and those busy months will go much more smoothly. – Jodi Amendola, Amendola Communications
9. Establish Regular Meetings
Vacations overlap the most during summer, but OOO coverage is relevant all year. Establish processes before the summer crunch hits. Even in the most siloed organization, one function’s work impacts the others. Staff are more apt to cover for colleagues when they see how functions intersect. Establish frequent, cross-functional status meetings and include vacation coverage on the agenda. – Keri Witman, Cleriti
10. Stagger Time Off
If there is a concern that your business may suffer if too many employees go on vacation at the same time, then stagger how many people can leave at once. Your team might be frustrated by the slight limitation, but ultimately will understand that the business also can’t be short-staffed. – Zachary Binder, Bell + Ivy
11. Use The ‘Buddy System’
Every employee in our agency has a defined “buddy on backup” when they go on vacation. The reciprocal notion of a buddy system inspires a true “you got my back, I got yours” mentality. We feel very strongly that vacation should be just that—a time to get away from all work activities. Knowing someone on your team has everything handled allows that to happen. – Danica Kombol, Everywhere Agency
12. Plan Ahead
Preplanning is key, so be sure to generate a consolidated OOO calendar for all employees, across all departments, in advance at the beginning of the summer. The project management team can then plan for resources and timelines in advance of travel and/or team members being out of the office. – Jessica Hawthorne-Castro, HAWTHORNE LLC
13. Coordinate And Communicate
Everyone is entitled to time off, and they deserve it! One way to ensure work doesn’t get lost or deadlines are missed is to over-communicate and coordinate coverage. Ensure colleagues know the dates, have access to files and references and clearly understand where they can help while others are out. Also, you can add dates to your calendar and invite colleagues so they have a gentle reminder. – Scott Kellner, GPJ Experience Marketing
