How to Plan For Your Time Out of Office
Preparing for your time out of the office is essential. By planning ahead, you can proactively relieve a huge amount of stress that otherwise may have been waiting for your return, and you’ll make things easier for your team as well. Perhaps most importantly, creating an out of office or vacation plan will diminish your work worries and allow you to focus on fun and relaxation while you're away.
As experienced Executive Assistants, we know all the best tips for preparing for time away from work — here's what you need to do to make sure that taking time away from work is as seamless as possible.
Communicate Your Out of Office Dates
As soon as you know you will be taking time off, send an out of office notice to your team and anyone else who may be impacted by your absence. This is a flag for them to plan ahead and stop scheduling meetings or projects during your time off. This way, you can avoid the stress of seeing notifications for meetings that need to be rescheduled.. If there are meetings scheduled during the time you will be out of the office, proactively reschedule the ones you own and decline or delegate attending the meetings you don’t own and/or can miss.
Another best practice is extending your work vacation to include a few hours on your last day in the office, utilizing the extra time to wrap up before you leave. Your team will see you are offline and you’ll have a dedicated block of time to tie up loose ends like replying to unanswered emails and setting up your auto-responder. Even if you’ve already finished those, this best practice will allow you to snag a few extra hours and start unwinding sooner!
Delegate Your Responsibilities
Once your team knows you will be out of office, you’ll need to identify what can wait for your return, what you need to delegate while you’re away, and how to communicate those responsibilities and expectations. For longer leaves, you may need to identify interim support, but for regular vacations or time off you likely will be delegating smaller tasks rather than the full scope of your responsibilities.
Questions to ask yourself when considering what to delegate:
What can I do exclusively?
What is time-sensitive?
What is recurring that needs to continue (ie. approving time cards)?
Is this task within someone’s natural scope of work?
Once you identify what tasks and responsibilities need to be completed while you’re out and have identified who you are delegating them to, be sure to send a personal message with a high-level overview of what you would like them to oversee. This can be an individual list or a link to a larger out of office plan that showcases all tasks that need to be worked on while you’re away. Whatever method you choose, be sure to check for their understanding and lay out what you expect upon your return. If you’re not sure they’re up to speed, set up a meeting with them to review the task.
Want more info about what to delegate? Here’s our free guide on what to delegate and here’s our guide on strategic delegation.
Create and Share an Out Of Office Memo
After you’ve decided who you’ll delegate your tasks to, you should ensure the rest of your colleagues know as well. This does not need to be anything fancy or special, a Google Doc works great and has the added benefit of being able to tag people so you know they receive the information.. This also allows them to ask clarifying questions before you go and add in updates while you are out.
Ultimately, your out of office memo should achieve two things;
Help you take time off without worrying about work
Set up your team for success while you are out
Whether you’ll be out for one week or one month, we recommend you follow this simple outline of what to include:
Dates you will be out of office
Key contacts while you are out such as your Executive Assistant and the primary point of contact for your key deliverables and decisions.
Overview of projects and expectations – this can be broken down however you like, as simple as a bulleted list or as formal as a table with assigned responsibilities. The main thing to remember is to make it clear who owns which task while you are gone.
An update section, checklist, or some tool that will make it easy for your team to track their progress and communicate any updates/challenges or information you’ll need when you get back
Identify the most important tasks to complete while you are out and what would be extra. Remember, the people stepping in to fill your shoes have their own job to do as well!
Things not to include in your out of office memo:
Contact information – your Executive Assistant may have this in case of a true emergency, but there should be no need to share this with your whole team
Confidential information for projects or tasks, as this information can be shared separately from the memo
Heavy details. The memo should be brief, informative and a resource. You can share all the details with those you’ve delegated to separately
We recommend you send your memo to your team at least one week before your time off begins so they’ll have time to ask questions and share details. This will also give you some breathing room in case you think of something you forgot. Waiting until the last minute will be stressful for you and may cause you to miss something important.
Crafting the Best Out of Office Message
Although you might be unplugged, the rest of the world will not stop—and those emails will be flying at your inbox a mile a minute! The best way to keep contacts from thinking you’re ghosting them is to craft an awesome out of office message. Here’s a handy Do/Don’t list for how to make your away message efficient and effective:
Keep it clear, professional, cordial, and set a boundary.
Include a “directory” of who to contact for urgent matters—and remember to include their emails and/or phone numbers!
Identify if you need to modify your vacation responder for internal or external contacts and adjust as needed.
Set your automatic vacation reply to start running the evening before your OOO begins. If you’re going on vacation on Friday, set your OOO to start on Thursday after you log off for the day. This will catch anyone that emails you later in the evening so they don’t wonder what happened!
Modify and shorten your OOO and set a note or flag on other communication platforms like Slack or Teams.
Having an Executive Assistant act as a gatekeeper here is fantastic, as they can identify what needs to be addressed and direct those emails to the appropriate person.
Don’t:
Forget to set a subject such as “Out of Office.”
Give personal details about your time off or where you are going.
Give your personal contact information for emergencies. Inevitably someone will contact you for something that likely is not an emergency.
Forget to actually turn it on!
Sample Out of Office Message
Thank you for your email, I am out of the office until [DATE]. I will respond to your email as soon as possible when I return.
If this is time-sensitive or urgent, please contact [NAME] at [EMAIL] or [PHONE]. Thanks!
[SIGNATURE]
How to Set Your Out Of Office Message
Sometimes the automatic vacation reply setting can be hidden deep within the settings. Here’s how to set up your out of office message on some of the most popular email clients: Gmail, iPhone/iPad, Apple Mail, Microsoft Outlook, Yahoo! Mail, and Samsung Mail.
Unplug and Enjoy Your Time Away From Work!
Lastly, and most importantly, fully unplug! Leave your work phone or laptop at home or turn it off! Having them available will create the temptation to check-in, and before you know it your brain will be switching gears to work mode. Truly unplugging during your time away is extremely beneficial for your mental wellbeing, physical health, and actually makes you more productive when you return. We are not built to work 24/7, we need true breaks from the stress of our jobs—regardless of how much we love it!
Do you struggle to fully unplug or rest during your time out of the office? Do you find yourself returning to work feeling burned out, stressed, and tired? An Executive Assistant is a great solution for managing the chaos while you’re away—and on an everyday basis too!
This work-life balance can be achieved. Contact us today to learn more about how you can get the support you need!
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