Every month of a PR specialist's work is filled to the brim with tasks. Creating press releases, meetings with clients, arranging interviews, organising events or creative dispatches are just some of the agency employees' tasks. So how do you plan a holiday among so many responsibilities? It turns out that all you need to do is organise everything well before you leave so that you are not preoccupied with business matters while you are on holiday. What exactly needs to be taken care of?
Holidays allow us to recharge our batteries and return to our daily duties with renewed vigour. However, it will not be worth it if our thoughts are... at work. We suggest what to look out for and what to take care of before you start your blissful laziness.
Timing matters
When going on holiday, the first thing to do is to choose the right date. Every month there are days that are not the best time to leave the office. The turn of the month is certainly one such period. This is usually the time when reports are prepared for clients in agencies, and a good report can be created by the person who works on the project every day. The beginning of the month is also the time when press releases are created and distributed. The best time to leave, therefore, is the second and third weeks, when materials have already been sent to the media and a follow up has been done.
Invaluable substitute
When planning a holiday, it is important to delegate day-to-day responsibilities to the person who will look after the project in our absence. It is worth remembering that such a person should be properly introduced. A face-to-face conversation with the colleague who will take over our responsibilities is an opportunity to present our activities accurately and to ensure that our deputy can handle everything. A short document containing the most important information about the activities and the client may also be helpful in this situation. What should such a file contain? First and foremost, a contact to the client, access to media monitoring and information on where all the materials created so far on this project are located. It is a good idea to provide the entire path to these materials right away. In the file, it is a good idea to outline once again all the activities to be carried out, as well as the tasks started. Listing them together with the contact details of the journalist or subcontractor can prove invaluable to our deputy and make his or her job significantly easier.
Keeping documents in order is essential
In the midst of daily chores, it is often the case that materials are hurriedly saved on the desktop or in a quickly created folder without a name. When we are looking for specific materials ourselves, we are bound to find them eventually, but when going on holiday, it is worth introducing a bit of tidiness that the person replacing us will appreciate. To this end, it is best to create a general folder on the desktop with all materials for individual clients. A folder with reports, press releases, additional materials, databases, business cards, photos - in fact, everything we do for a client should be in there. When describing the folder, it is also a good idea to indicate which materials are the final version. After all, none of us wants a situation in which material goes out to the media without final corrections and the client's approval.
Inform the customer
When going on holiday, it is important not to forget to inform the client of our absence. After communicating this information in person or by phone, it is also worth sending a short email stating the exact days we will be out of reach and without access to mail, as well as who will be replacing us during this time. It is worth confirming to the client that we are leaving the project in good hands. Before the holiday, information about our absence should also be communicated to journalists with whom we are in regular contact and/or with whom we have unfinished topics. On the last day before the holiday, you should also set up an autoresponder on your mail. This will ensure that people who try to contact us while we are away are informed of the date we are on leave and who they can contact about specific projects.
Good preparation for the holiday, including the deployment of a suitable replacement person, will certainly help to ensure that the planned holiday can be spent recuperating and resting rather than coordinating activities remotely.
Text author: Kasia
