Take a Break
It's vacation season
We all know the hassle of trying to schedule meetings during the summer months.
There might be a temptation to use the remote options from the pandemic in order to include people in meetings while they are on vacation.
Don’t.
Ideally, have a policy in which people who are on vacation are not contacted. Leave them out of the real-time loop. Let them know that they are NOT required to answer phone calls, texts, emails, etc. until they return to the office, and that you discourage even checking their work accounts. Their vacation time is THEIR time.
To make this work, the person going on vacation should designate contact people for their different projects. They should pre-train their team members to know what to do and how to do it when things come up. They should contact their clients and let them know that they will be out of the office for the dates of the vacation, and who to contact if there is a time-sensitive issue. They should leave an “if-then” document for their team that covers likely issues (e.g., “If Jane calls asking for the latest numbers, get them from Jose and send them as a PDF attachment to jane@client.com”).
If you schedule meetings with people still in the workplace, you can then send an email to the full team—including the vacationing team-members—to let them know what was discussed and decided, so they can quickly catch up once they are back in the office.
Pro Tip: Sending a brief “this is what was discussed and decided” email
after every meeting is a great habit, even when the entire team
was in the meeting.Not only will this help your team members recharge and restore work/life balance, it also builds up the competency and experience of other team members. Handling an account for a week helps a younger staffer learn how to handle one full-time. And if someone has a family emergency or health emergency at some time in the future, the team isn’t starting from baseline when stepping up to manage that person’s workload.
