The holiday season has arrived and let’s be honest, we’re all thrilled about it! After what feels like the soggiest spring (and summer so far) on record we are all ready to dig out our holiday gear, enjoy some downtime, and hopefully enjoy some sunshine.
Whilst getting ready for our holidays can be super exciting, wrapping up for annual leave, and then actually switching off isn’t always as straightforward.
We wish to share with you in this article our top tips to ensure you are able to relax and maximise your time off during your well-deserved annual leave.
Book time off in advance – Where possible it’s always best to plan your holidays in advance, and also spread throughout the year to help avoid burnout. We suggest adding these dates to your auto signature to ensure your team and clients have advance notice that you will be out of the office. A long lead-up to your holiday will also ensure that you have plenty of time to prepare and work through any urgent actions.
Handover – We recommend you start writing your handover a couple of weeks in advance of your annual leave and keep adding to it each day. This will help you plan your urgent actions as well as reduce the risk of missing anything. Before you head off on leave, you should share your handover and ideally talk in in-person/telephone to ensure your team is clear and you have answered any of their questions. This will help them enormously, but also will help you to switch off knowing you have thoroughly handed over your workload.
Assign a point of contact for clients – It’s important that business continues as normal as much as possible whilst you are off. You may wish to assign your workload to one person within your team, or perhaps distribute across several colleagues. Either way, your team should know well in advance what they will be responsible for and your client base should know who will be looking after them in your absence. Set your out of office on before you leave for your holiday and remember to add the contact details of whoever will be looking after your workload.
Set clear boundaries – We recommend you switch off as much as possible, and avoid checking in with work whilst you are away. Downtime is really important and you should be prioritising yourself. However, if it is important for you to receive any updates, or allow your team to get in touch with you, you must set clear boundaries of what you would like to hear about. It’s easy to get sucked back into full-on work mode.
Turn off notifications and apps – We understand how tempting it is to have a sneaky look through your emails just to check all is ok, but we urge you to resist the temptation! Your team will no doubt have everything in hand, and it can be so difficult to wind down when on holiday so try your very best not to undo this. As mentioned above, if there is something in particular you would like to keep an eye on inform your team to allow them to contact you about it, otherwise trust that all will be taken care of.
Mindfulness and relaxation – The most important thing to remember when you are on your holiday is to be present in the moment, try and relax, and enjoy every minute. You work hard and you deserve your break!
Whether you are jet-setting abroad for a fly and flop or have decided on a stay-cation we hope our tips above will help you achieve some well-deserved downtime whilst you are on annual leave. We are confident that the advice we have given you will not just help you to make the most of your time away from your desk, but you will come back to work feeling refreshed and ready to go again.