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Our ClickUp Out-of-Office Process has solved several plotholes in our business. If you’ve ever found yourself feeling overwhelmed whenever team members unexpectedly go out of the office, then this one’s for you!
In this blog post, we’ll go over the strategy that changed how we handle time-off requests. To be more specific, it’s a ClickUp template specially designed to manage our team’s time-off requests smoothly and efficiently!
Why Do You Need ClickUp Out-Of-Office Process?
Regardless of the size of your team, an out-of-office process is crucial to build a sustainable business. Not only does it prevent unwanted panic moments, but it also allows the team to plan ahead so you can all avoid last minute firefighting.
Just to be clear, when we talk about time-off or out-of-office, this includes paid time-offs, holidays, and essentially all instances where your resources could be temporarily out of reach. Having a well-defined out-of-office process reduces confusion not only for you, and your team but also your clients.
Additionally, it cultivates better planning. Crystal clear visibility into everyone’s availability means you can plan accordingly. It removes the guesswork! So, you know that your content calendar isn’t interrupted. You know your content marketing process is enforced – yes, even if your writer is on a break or you’re on vacation.
This also promotes equality within your team by being fair and consistent in handling time off requests. But not just that, it also fosters a healthier work-life harmony. It is a proactive way of conveying the importance of personal time to your team.
And trust me, this becomes even more important given the diverse work cultures in different countries, and often the unhealthy notion that we should always be ON and working around the clock (yeah, we don’t do that in my team!).
When you actively encourage time off, you’re allowing your team to recharge and actually live their lives outside of your business. Because while your business is important, the people who work with you are not bound to serving your every whim. Your team members will feel more empowered and happy when you give them room to just be without being all weird about it.
With my team, it’s all about transparency. If you need to be away, say so – sooner rather than later. That way the rest can sort through what needs to be done to keep the machine (aka the business) running smoothly.
Like I always say, “You take care of your team, and your team will take care of you” thus, creating a mutually healthy work environment.
How To Build An Easy ClickUp Out Of Office Process
Managing an out-of-office process can be a breeze if you have the right tools. This is where ClickUp comes into play. With its user-friendly layout and effective management systems, it’s an easy solution that makes managing your team’s time off requests effortless.
By tracking everyone’s time off, you can easily navigate and schedule tasks, making your workload management straightforward and fuss-free!
Within the ClickUp Space, you can first set up your OOO (Out-Of-Office) Manager Folder. As you can see here, for our team we put in holidays as lists. We got German, US, Philippines, and even Brazil holidays. Then, you can customize each list with its specific color. If the holiday is on the same day every year, and it doesn’t change, plug it in, and set it on a recurring task.
One thing you would want to do is to set all of these tasks as “Date Record” so it’s not an actionable task.
For the ClickUp Template for the OOO Notification, what you’ll see is a simple form where we use the people custom field for the requestor. There’s also the time of start date, time of end date, and also reason or description of the Out Of Office request.
Why use a people custom field instead of an assignee? Well, this is based on whether the request is going to be approved or not. If it’s assigned right away, it funnels around with their to-do list and all kinds of stuff.
Unlike the custom field, once it’s approved, only then can we assign it to them and set a time estimate, which also blocks their availability in workload.
Going back to the Calendar view, it’ll look like this once there’s a request.
Implementing This ClickUp Out Of Office Process With Your Team
Integrating the time-off management process into ClickUp is just the beginning. A critical part of its implementation lies in effectively communicating its functionality to your team, making sure they are comfortable and confident in using it.
To smoothen this transition, you can conduct a demo showcasing the process, underline clear guidelines, and create a standard operating procedure. Making the process mandatory will ensure consistency but remember to be patient during this phase as it takes time to build a new habit.
Another key factor to successfully implementing my ClickUp out of office template is through leading by example. Regular check-ins with your team can help streamline the process, along with personal conversations to remind them to plan their time-offs.
Lastly, take feedback and continuously enhance your process based on your team’s experience. Always note that the goal is not just system and process improvement, but also a conscious effort to elevate the overall team experience, business efficiency, and client satisfaction.
MIC DROP
Managing time-off requests doesn’t need to be a constant headache for business owners or entrepreneurs. Whether it’s a small or large company, a properly managed out-of-office procedure is an integral aspect of running a successful business.
Minimizes Confusion: Uncertainty about team members’ availability can lead to confusion in seeking help or attending meetings. A centralized system eliminates this issue.
- Enhances Planning: Visibility into upcoming time off allows for improved project and workload planning, aligning tasks with team members’ availability.
- Prevents Overlapping Requests: A centralized calendar prevents multiple individuals from requesting the same days off, streamlining the approval process.
- Promotes Equality: Structured approval processes ensure fair and consistent handling of time-off requests, promoting an equitable work environment.
- Supports Work-Life Balance: An organized system facilitates easier planning for time off, reducing burnout and fostering a healthier work-life balance for employees.
- Boosts Efficiency: Automation reduces the manual workload for HR by tracking multiple calendars and spreadsheets, saving time and improving overall efficiency.
- Facilitates Analytics & Reporting: Centralized data allows easy retrieval of reports on time-off trends, informing policy decisions and improving workforce management.
- Mitigates Last-Minute Surprises: Full visibility into the system reduces the frustration and scramble for managers when unplanned absences occur.
- Professional Client Image: A well-organized system ensures that clients aren’t caught off guard by unexpected employee absences, maintaining a professional image.
- Enhances Employee Experience: A seamless and transparent process empowers team members, contributing to their satisfaction and overall positive experience. This, in turn, boosts retention rates and strengthens the company’s reputation.
This strategy is the key to running smooth business operations even when team members are on a holiday, birthday, or vacation. You can help your company build a safe work environment where they feel comfortable taking some time off to recharge and refresh. After all, we deserve to do the work we enjoy and excel at, all while enjoying our lives! 🙂
So, what are you waiting for? Join us in the SOARR SQUAD and get this FREE ClickUp Out-Of-Office template, and start managing those calendar requests like a boss!
Episode 171 – Transcript + Timestamps
This Completely Changed How We Handle Time Off Requests!
ClickUp Template To Handle Time Off Requests
[00:00:00] Yvonne Heimann: Are you tired of scrambling when employees or your team members are unexpectedly out of office because you forgot they told you they have a birthday or they’re on vacation? The ClickUp template I’m going to be showing you today can handle your pay time off, your holidays, and your out of office requests seamlessly and effortlessly, no more, Oh shit. I forgot you’re out of office tomorrow. Yeah, let’s not do that anymore.
[00:00:24] Within this video, I’m going to guide you through three parts. In the first part, we’re going to be talking about why is having an out of office process important, even if you have a small team, how to build an easy solution, really simple for you and making managing your workload a breeze.
[00:00:43] Yes. I’m going to show you how to set it up in ClickUp and then number three, how to implement it with your team and make sure this thing you just built doesn’t just help you, but also helps your team and gets used by your team.
Empowering Work-Life Balance Through An Out Of Office Process
[00:00:55] Let’s dive into part number one. Why is having an out of [00:01:00] office process so important? And when I say out of office, that means paid time off. That means you’re independent contractors taking time off and being not available to you. That means holidays, all the things, whatever type of time off you are talking about, first of all, it reduces confusion. You don’t have this. Oh shit, you were not in what? Hey, where, what?
[00:01:22] It reduces confusion for you, but also your clients. What are you saying? Wait, what? My account manager is not in? Let’s not do that. How about that? It also allows for better planning. When we start a business, we are often react being able to plan ahead and make sure that content goes out, even though your blog writer might not be available or you take a break, yet your YouTube content still goes out.
[00:01:46] You’re eliminating double and triple requests, meaning suddenly the whole team is out of office. Let’s, let’s not do that. How often does it happen of, Hey, I’m going to take those two days off. And yeah, that’s a holiday. I’m taking those days [00:02:00] off too. And then somebody else comes and says, I’m taking days off too.
[00:02:03] And you did that where in your Slack channel in the middle of the chat and nobody knows when, who, where, why, what let’s not do that. It also promotes equality. It means you fairly and consistently can handle your team’s time off. Hey, they always get time off, but I don’t. It’s equality. We all want to treat everybody on our team the same.
[00:02:25] And if you do not have that time off list and the request. It’s your perception. It also allows your team to build a work life balance, having this process in place and being proactive about it. And I talked about this in another video where different countries have different perceptions and different way of perceiving things and doing things.
[00:02:47] With this, you allow your team to say, Hey, I would like to have time off without being like, so, so, um. I know we are supposed to be working 24 seven, because that’s often a perception in certain countries. [00:03:00] No, you are upfront telling them that personal life matters too. And here is an easy process for you to say, Hey, I need time off. Analytics and reporting.
[00:03:08] Yes. You know, I’m all about data. Does your team actually take time off? Do they recharge? So they can be there for you and your company. Again, how many days do they take off? Should you reach out to them and be like, Hey, go, go take a mental health day. Go take some time off. If we do not have this data, we cannot support our team.
[00:03:28] How we want to support that. And it’s simply enhances your employee and your team experience. Your team members feel more empowered and happy when this process is seamlessly and they don’t have to be like, all weird about it. It’s just transparent. And with that, it boosts your team tension. It’s simple.
[00:03:49] You take care of your team and your team will take care of you and likes working with you and your company even more for that. And talk about liking something. How about you like the video down [00:04:00] at the button below. So other people that are struggling with the process can easier find this video, because YouTube said, Hey, they’re liking the video. We need to show it to somebody else.
How To Build An Easy Out Of Office Process In ClickUp
[00:04:11] Now let’s dive into part number two of this video. Cool. We got the point. This is important. We really want to do this. It makes your life easier. It makes the team’s life easier. It makes everybody’s life easier. How do we implement this in ClickUp? Let me show you. Now that we got the advantages covered, there is really no disadvantage for having this.
[00:04:32] It doesn’t take a lot of time to implement and roll it out. We’ll talk about the human aspect of, of integrating this process into your business here in a second. For now, I want to show you the practical side of things and how do we build an out of office process within ClickUp. Let me show you.
[00:04:51] This right here. What you see right now is a big picture overview of what’s happening. Kid, Kitty, Kitty’s nanny [00:05:00] took a vacation, which meant Kitty is going to, to wrangle the kids. So yeah, she’s going to need a vacation for that one. And as you see, we have it in our calendar right here. So how does this process work. When you look at our out of office manager folder right here in ClickUp. You’ll see that we do not just handle out of office in here. We also have our us holidays. We have our Filipino holidays. We have our German holiday. As well as the holidays in Brazil. And what that allows us to do is look at a calendar that first of all, tells us all of the holidays of the team members, you easily can add more of those holidays in here, but also see they’re out of office and vacation time.
[00:05:44] Now, how do we do this? This calendar is first of all on folder level and pulled all of these lists in here. Then we went into customizing our calendar and we are coloring first of all, this [00:06:00] by the list. So as you can see right here, our team has a red list, which means all of the tasks that is team time off is in the red color for Brazil.
[00:06:10] We chose blue for Filipino, purple. German holidays are in yellow. And so on, we are not pulling in any custom date fields because we are using start and end date for this. In your holidays, make it really simple. If the holiday is on the same day, every single year, and it doesn’t change, plug it in, set it on recurring task.
[00:06:34] Really? It’s like new year’s is always on the January 1st. So plug in your holidays, set them on recurring. If they have, if they are recurring that way. Now, one thing you do want to do is, and we haven’t set the default yet is all of these tasks are a date record. So visually you can see, this is a date record and not an actionable task.
[00:06:55] Cool. We’ve got the holidays out of the way. Use the recurring task. If you [00:07:00] can, let’s dive into the actual time off and vacation request right here in ClickUp. It is one list for all of the team members. And what we have here is an out of office notification, a simple form where we use the people, that is the people custom field.
[00:07:16] And I explain in a second why we use people and not assignee. As the requester time of start date, that is your start date, time of the end date, which is the due date and just a reason. So we have a task name with this, which then turns into these requests that we have right here. Now, why did we use a people custom field rather than the assignee?
[00:07:40] This is based on, are we approving time off? Are we not approving time off? Meaning they requested start date and due date, the start date of their time off here in ClickUp as well as the end time of their time off here in ClickUp using the start date and the due date functionality in ClickUp. If they would be [00:08:00] assigned right away, it funnels around with their to do list and all kinds of stuff.
[00:08:04] So as long as this is like that. It doesn’t fuss around with any of their tasks. We then, once it’s approved, we then assign it to them and set a time estimate, which now also blocks their availability in workload. So when you look at your workload view within ClickUp, they’re going to be fully booked and have no time to take care of anything else.
[00:08:29] And with that, going back into the calendar view, this is how this then shows up. In your calendar. And since I’m showing you this calendar right here, tell me in the comment section, what’s your favorite holiday? Mine? Birthday? Is that considered a holiday? I’m all for it. Or, maybe Christmas. I don’t know. Is birthday a holiday birthday should be considered a holiday. Don’t you think?
Implementing The Out Of Office Process With Your Team
[00:08:53] Now that we have the practical application and how you set this up right here in ClickUp. The human aspect comes [00:09:00] in, you want your team to use this, you want your team to be able to feel confident using this. So explain to them why you were bringing this in rather than them just coming to you and be like, Hey, I want some time off, explain to them that it’s beneficial for them too.
[00:09:17] And then don’t expect them to be used to the process to easily understand it. Yes. It might make sense to us, but it might not make sense to them. So make sure you demo how this is being submitted and how this works. You also want to set clear guidelines. Yes. Standard Operating Procedures. Did I mention standard operating procedures?
[00:09:37] Did I mention standard operating procedures? And are you hosting them in ClickUp? Because we do. Also make it mandatory. Everybody needs to follow this process or this process won’t work. However, even though you make it mandatory, be patient with the implementation. You are creating a new habit with your team.
[00:09:54] These, if you haven’t used this before, they haven’t done it. So if somebody comes, Hey, I want to take a time off, [00:10:00] get it in the out of office manager, you know where this is going. It’s just like brushing teeth. Initially. It’s like, did you brush your teeth? Did you brush your teeth? At some point it becomes muscle memory and then lead by example.
[00:10:12] Yeah, you’re telling your team to do this. So you better be doing this too and check in regularly with the team. Hey, what’s coming up when you are talking with them, do you have any plans, have that personal conversation to take a lot of, they maybe should request some time off because it’s your birthday, you should have time off and continuously enhance the process.
[00:10:33] Talk with your team. What do they like? What do they not like about this process and collect data and feeback. And this process is not the only one to be continuously enhanced. I’m sure you always working to enhance yourself and your business continuously. So make sure you hit that subscribe button. Where’s the subscribe button?
[00:10:51] I think it’s down there or is it down there? I don’t know. Hit the subscribe button for you to get weekly videos to help you do just that. To continuously [00:11:00] grow yourself as well as your business. Now, if you want to have this template, this template is actually a bonus template right in our source squad.
[00:11:11] And the more you engage in the community, the more templates you’re going to get. So come join us at AskYvi.Tips/Community to get your time off template for your own ClickUp. Your team deserves more support and resources than just this out of office manager, right here in ClickUp.
[00:11:30] It is time for you to watch the video right here, where I cover five spaces every business ClickUp setup should have to support you and your team. Subscribed yet? Did I just call you out on that? We all want to go out and go hit that subscribe button. And I see you in the next video.
Timestamps
00:00 | ClickUp Template To Handle Time Off Requests
00:55 | Empowering Work-Life Balance Through An Out Of Office Process
04:44 | How To Build An Easy Out Of Office Process In ClickUp
08:53 | Implementing The Out Of Office Process With Your Team
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