{"id":8547,"date":"2018-12-28T06:21:13","date_gmt":"2018-12-28T06:21:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monsterindia.com\/career-advice\/how-to-prepare-a-watertight-handover-that-wont-interfere-with-your-holidays-8547\/"},"modified":"2023-10-04T14:53:14","modified_gmt":"2023-10-04T09:23:14","slug":"how-to-prepare-a-watertight-handover-that-wont-interfere-with-your-holidays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.foundit.sg\/career-advice\/how-to-prepare-a-watertight-handover-that-wont-interfere-with-your-holidays\/","title":{"rendered":"How to prepare a watertight handover that won’t interfere with your holidays"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

The holidays are near and your plans are made \u2013 it\u2019s nearly time to rejoice. The last thing you want while you\u2019re away from the office is an email from your colleague with \u2018urgent\u2019 in the subject line. To avoid being mentally pulled back into the office when you are on holiday, make sure you create a watertight handover that doesn\u2019t leave any questions unanswered. Here are a few tips on what you need to do to avoid major mistakes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Start early<\/span><\/strong>
\n
\nDon\u2019t start drafting your handover one hour before leaving the office. Chances are high that you will not remember everything that you need to include if you feel rushed or have already mentally checked out. To avoid last-minute stress and half-completed sentences, start a few days before you go on leave so that you can add items to the list whenever you remember them.<\/span><\/p>\n

Expect the unexpected<\/span><\/strong>
\n
\nRemember that one project that was put on hold several months ago? According to Murphy\u2019s Law, your holiday is the exact time when that project will come back around. While it may seem excessive to include seemingly random projects in your handover document, it\u2019s important to have them there, just in case \u2013 that way, you\u2019ll avoid any potential confusion from an uninformed colleague back in the office.<\/span><\/p>\n

The devil\u2019s in the details
\n<\/span><\/strong>
\nWhile you might have an overview of all the different email threads that belong to any given project, your co-workers may not \u2013 especially if they generally don\u2019t work on that project and are covering for you while you\u2019re away. Make sure you give a detailed overview of every project, including deadlines, what\u2019s completed (and what\u2019s not), and what you need them to do. Do also link to any relevant files and folders in your handover email, so it becomes their reference point while you are gone.<\/span><\/p>\n

Talk your colleagues through it<\/span><\/strong>
\n
\nOnce you have completed your handover, it\u2019s recommended to talk each relevant person through it. While you may think that\u2019s overdoing it, it gives your colleagues the chance to ask questions (read: so that they don\u2019t have to bother you during your holiday). Additionally, a conversation with them allows you to make sure that everyone has actually seen and read the handover, effectively preventing the \u2018oh I didn\u2019t know\u2019 excuse.<\/span><\/p>\n

Set your out-of-office email<\/span><\/strong>
\n
\nAs your handover email is only internal, you also need to set your out-of-office email notification as an automatic reply to any incoming email. Try to keep it short, but do also make sure that you mention clearly the time period you will be gone for, when you return, and whom of your colleagues to contact (including their email) if they need to reach anyone. And for those clients that you are working with on an almost daily basis, you can even consider telling them in advance, so they don\u2019t freak out when they see your out-of-office email.<\/span><\/p>\n

Once this is all done, you can relax and head off into your holiday with an easy feeling that everything is under control. And even if something out of the ordinary happens, the right people know what to do. Once you are back from the holiday, you can bounce back strong<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The holidays are near and your plans are made \u2013 it\u2019s nearly time to rejoice. The last thing you want while you\u2019re away from the office is an email from your colleague with \u2018urgent\u2019 in the subject line. To avoid being mentally pulled back into the office when you are on holiday, make sure you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11801,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[140],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8547","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-leave-application"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.sg\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.sg\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.sg\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.sg\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.sg\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8547"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.sg\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11806,"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.sg\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8547\/revisions\/11806"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.sg\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.sg\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.sg\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.sg\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}