📸 #AIgenerated
It’s the last day at work before my holiday.
2.47 pm. My suitcase is half-packed. My flight leaves tomorrow morning at 6.35 am. And the colleague who’s covering for me has been sitting next to my desk for ten minutes, nodding.
“Right, Berger sometimes rings up – he doesn’t like emails, so just give him a call back. The file with the quotes is somewhere on the server; I think it’s in the 2024 folder, or was it 2023? Oh, and the password for the tool – I’ll send that to you straight away, just a moment.”
3.03 pm. The handover is officially complete.
Three weeks later, the agency had called seven times. On two occasions, they rang the wrong client. And the file containing the quotes was never found.
Why this is not an isolated case
Most of us are familiar with this scenario. Either as the person going on holiday – or as the one left behind who is suddenly expected to know things that were never written down.
An alarmingly large proportion of organisational knowledge is tacit. It resides in the minds of individuals, in verbal agreements, and in email threads to which no one else has access. As long as the same people are always there, it doesn’t stand out. During the holiday season, however, things suddenly go haywire everywhere. And that costs time, frays nerves, and sometimes even damages customer relationships.
The real problem isn’t the holiday
It would, however, be too simplistic to dismiss this as a summer problem. The truth is: anyone who fails to organise a proper handover has a knowledge problem, not a holiday problem.
Knowledge that exists only in one person’s mind is fragile. It is lost if someone falls ill, if someone leaves the company, or if they are simply unavailable for other reasons.
The holiday season is often just the time of year when this becomes apparent.
What a good handover requires
A smooth handover when going on holiday is not a question of time, but of structure. If you know where to store information, it won’t take half a day. All you need to do is answer the following three questions:
Where can I find what? Which documents, files and pieces of information are relevant – and where exactly are they located?
Who’s who? Who are the relevant contacts, both internally and externally – and what is the best way to get in touch with them?
What’s on at the moment? What outstanding issues, ongoing processes or upcoming deadlines does the representative need to be aware of?
How Staffice can help
In Staffice, you can create a handover category in the wiki or as a board section – for the whole department or for specific individuals. Documents, photos, contacts, notes – everything in one place, accessible on the go, even whilst travelling.
The great thing about it is that it’s not a one-off task you have to do before going on holiday. Once it becomes a habit to continuously update knowledge, the handover eventually ceases to be a project. It just happens.
And the colleague taking over doesn’t have to sit next to your desk and just nod along anymore.
Conclusion
A well-organised handover is not a sign of perfection. It is a sign of respect – towards your stand-in, towards your clients and towards yourself. If you really want to go on holiday, you need to be able to let go. And you can only let go if you know that everything has been sorted out.
