Sometimes, there’s only lessons you learn once they happen when you run a business, but honestly, it’s best to learn them in advance, though, so you can just flat out avoid them from ever happening, right? Well, people having days off, well, specifically multiple days off, like a vacation, sabbatical, maternity leave, paternity leave, sick leave, well, you name it, just someone on the team that’s going to be unreachable for a while.
But for whatever reason, even if a business knows someone will be gone for a while, nine times out of ten, there’s still some sort of crisis. It’s a crisis that shouldn’t even be there, but it still happens! How to prevent a work crisis when an employee is on vacation sounds like it should be obvious, right? Someone puts an out-of-office up, the team covers, everything’s fine, everyone survives, end of story. That’s at least how it should be, though. But yeah, sure, that’s the fantasy version.
Well, the real version is one person goes offline and, somehow, that person was also the unofficial owner of three passwords, two vendor logins, the monthly report nobody else knows how to pull, and knew how to properly work the printer. It sounds silly, but this is so common. People get busy, and so expectations sometimes lean on one person. So, businesses need to prevent a crisis, but what’s the best way?
Identify the Vacation Vulnerabilities Before the Vacation Starts
Well, shouldn’t that be easy enough? Right now, it’s really going to help to just start off by spotting the handful of things that only that employee touches, and doing it early enough that there’s time to fix the gaps without making it weird. That usually means asking, in plain language, what breaks if this person is unreachable for three days.
What logins are only on their laptop, what recurring tasks live entirely in their head, what files are saved locally instead of shared, and what approvals get stuck waiting on them? Literally, all you’re doing is asking; that’s it, it’s that easy.
It’s Time to Build a Coverage Plan
So, just above it was brought up that it’s quite literally as simple as just asking for information, and so with that information comes a plan. A coverage plan can’t be “someone will figure it out,” because that’s how tiny issues turn into lost time and angry customers. It needs to be specific, but not complicated.
A simple handoff works when it includes three things: who’s responsible for what while the employee’s out, where the important info lives, and how to handle the top three predictable problems. Like, if invoices go out every Thursday, somebody needs access to the system and the template, and they need to know what “normal” looks like so they can spot what’s off. Makes sense?
Now, with that part said, this is also where businesses realize they don’t just need coverage for tasks, they need coverage for tech problems too, depending on how big your business is, it might even be time to consider looking into outsourced IT support, it’s usually needed for scaling and it can very well just help prevent these whole PTO crises too.
Stop Letting One Person be the Keeper of Everything
Hence, why outsourcing was brought up earlier. Overall,l here, it’s easy to confuse “being essential” with “being the only one who knows.” But a business that depends on one person knowing everything is basically choosing stress on purpose. Seriously, it’s time to share, it’s time to let others know, it’s an awful idea to let someone be the keeper because this is how a crisis happens.
