Holiday planning for managers

Before your holiday: Put a buffer in your work calendar

Everyone, without exception, has experienced being extremely busy in the last days leading up to the start of the holiday - and thus you run the risk of taking mentally challenging work tasks and considerations with you on holiday. The trick is to plan well in advance of the start of the summer holidays, both what you as a manager, but also your employees and the organisation in general need to finish before the holidays.

It's a great idea to add a buffer in your calendar for the last few days before your holiday. A buffer that gives you time to finalise less important things and also gives you breathing space if some of the big things haven't been finalised yet.

During your holiday: Be a role model by taking time off

As a general rule, you should take time off when you're on holiday - whether you're a manager or an employee. In order to be a great leader, you need to recover. If you work around the clock and during holidays, you risk losing your sharpness and freshness.

In addition, you need to think about the signal you send by being available during your holidays. As a manager, you are a role model, and if you answer emails every day during your holiday, it may raise doubts among your employees and elsewhere in the organisation about whether it is okay to take time off during your summer holiday.

It's also important that you as a manager plan who will take care of urgent tasks during your holiday instead of you. You need to organise yourself out of the workload, but also out of the responsibility.

After the holidays: Set aside days to catch up

You should try to avoid setting significant deadlines immediately after the summer holidays. Just getting through your inbox can be time-consuming on the first working days after the holidays, so it's no good having a calendar full of large, urgent tasks. It's important that you, as a manager, signal to your employees that it's a good idea to spend a few days after the holidays catching up on what happened over the summer.