One of Fulcrum Group’s dictums is “when you go on vacation, we want you to vacate!”
Isn’t the point of recharging your batteries to fully recharge? If you’re one of those who typically needs a vacation from the return-from-vacation chaos, we’ve got some great tips for you.
- Email prep might include glancing through your email to prioritize and delegate responsibilitiesbefore you leave. Beyond creating an standard “out of office” email notification for incoming mail, address things other people can be taking care of in your absence, prioritize your tasks and take full advantage of the functionality your office applications provide. Task lists can be built in Outlook, or you can organize your email inbox with folders (which you can manually move email messages to, or create rules to auto-forward messages to certain folders), so upon your return, much of the new mail in your inbox is actually new.
- Prepare your office phone. Change your office phone and/or cell phone greeting.
Be sure to specify who people can contact in your absence and a great idea is to ‘share the burden of followup’ with them by requesting they follow up with you, when you’re back at the office, on whichever day it is. Perhaps tantrums from disgruntled colleagues can be avoided if you remind them that your out of office message requested they followup with you upon your arrival back. Great Unified Communication (UC) products like Digium’s Switchvox phone system has useful features including rule-making to autoforward incoming calls to a backup number when you’re out of the office. The Fulcrum Group can even preprogram your holiday schedule right into your Switchvox phone system, so that your phones will auto-rollover to your holiday greeting or ‘out of office’ greeting of choice. Very important – do remember to keep things professional by changing your cell or office phone greeting back upon your return.
- Preparing your IT department adequately for your absence couldn’t be simpler if your IT department is The Fulcrum Group. As a SPOT Managed IT Services client, there’s no need to worry about your IT. We’ve already got you covered. If you’re not a SPOT Managed IT Services client, you can reach out to us to arrange temporary coverage for your IT.
We offer an array of custom solutions to meet your technology needs. Contact us before your next opportunity to vacate and truly have a worry-free time.
Also, don't miss our June white paper coming up next week, which elaborates on the topic a bit more. To receive a white paper (and digital newsletter) each month with valuable information on a variety of tech topics, subscribe in the lower right-hand corner of this (or any) page.