You Can Make It Easier for Yourself to Take Time Off

As we try to eke out as much fun from the final months of summer as possible, many of us will find it increasingly challenging to disconnect from the office—even from miles away. We could be lounging on a quiet beach in Bora Bora, but instead of enjoying the tranquility, we’d still be itching to check our emails. Instead of being able to truly relax, many team members and business owners still feel the pressures of the office even when away, essentially undoing any benefits of the vacation.

Let’s discuss how this can be addressed for the mutual benefit of everyone, allowing you and your team members to step away from time to time without causing disruptions.

Why is It So Hard to Step Away from Work and Just Relax?

What is it that keeps us so preoccupied with work, even when it is time for play? There are a few contributing factors to address:

• Certain people need to be present for specific functions. Let’s assume a business has been structured in such a way that specific individuals are required for various processes or to provide key information. In that case, it not only puts productivity at risk but also places undue pressure on those individuals to be present. For business leaders, it can lead to them overloading their own agendas, fearing that they are the only ones reliable enough to follow through.
  
  
• There are always issues that need to be solved. It can be too easy for anyone, particularly business leaders, to fall into a pattern of merely catching up with the latest issue, only for a new one to emerge just as the preceding one is being addressed. This puts you in a pattern of playing catch-up, not excelling or improving.
  
  
• The company’s technology offers various issues. Oftentimes, a business’ technology can grow and twist without a strategy to guide it. This results in a litany of problems, including redundant and incompatible applications, siloed information, company data being saved on personal cloud accounts, and software going without updates. In any case, it's a bad time.

So, how can we address these challenges so that any time set aside for rest and relaxation is actually restful and relaxing? Simple: by creating a system that frees and encourages your team to take advantage of their time without worrying about their tasks falling to their coworkers.

Let’s discuss how to do so.

How to Help Your Team Feel Free to Recharge

There are five elements that you can pursue to assist your team in taking a break when appropriate. They are as follows:

Use Automation Everywhere Possible

There are a lot of manual and repetitive tasks that frequently pop up, each of which takes time and energy to complete. Automating these tasks allows you to commit more time to more pressing tasks, with your technology handling the time-intensive ones… things like invoicing, email marketing, social media scheduling, and backup preparations.

Centralize Your Data

The better organized your data is, the less stressful it will be to find… even after some time away. Modern, centralized systems are available to facilitate various business needs, including customer relationship management, cloud-based file management, and unified communications. Having things securely accessible makes it far less stressful, simply because resources are easier to find when needed.

Secure Your Business

If you and your team are worried about a cyberattack striking your business while you’re away, the relaxation you’re supposed to be getting is more than likely going to be out of reach. That said, implementing a comprehensive security solution that is proactively managed and maintained will help give you the peace of mind you need to fully enjoy your vacation. Your business needs an assortment of tools to help accomplish this, such as:

• Managed firewalls
• Endpoint detection and response (EDR)
• Vulnerability scanning
• Multi-Factor authentication

Document Your Processes

Having a clear and written record of how your various business needs and processes are to be carried out is simply useful. Therefore, you should establish these processes so that your employees know how to do any task in their purview. This will empower them to act with independence, rather than needing to check in at every step. 

Disconnect and Stress Test

This part is, practically speaking, the easiest step of this process… but at the same time, it can be the hardest for many business owners to do: let go.

Completely unplug from the workplace. Take a long weekend. Let your processes run, and check in on how well they operated once you’re back. Review what worked, and even more crucially, what didn’t.

Using this data, refine your processes and take some time—gradually expanding this time until you’re able to step away without impacting your business operations for weeks.

Everyone on Your Team Should Feel Able to Use their Time

That’s just the beginning of the benefits, too. Ensuring your business can adapt when key personnel are missing is a key part of business continuity planning. Ready to build your own business’ resilience? Give us a call at (254) 848-7100.