Holiday Downtime
Posted by Sarah Rixey on Mon, Nov 21, 2011
Prepare Your Office for Holiday Closures
It's the week of Thanksgiving and most of us are making our “to do” lists in preparation for Turkey Day. Grocery lists, travel arrangements, get-the-house-ready checklists, and even the football schedules are all being checked and double-checked.
With excitement in the air, it is easy to forget the important steps you should take before closing up shop for the long weekend.
To help you ready your business, we’ve created a list of the top ten things you need to do to prepare your office for holiday closures
:
10. Schedule your “out of office” message for your email.
9. Change your voice-mail message to indicate that you’re closed (or that your hours may be shortened or expanded for the holiday).
8. Check your delivery schedules and notify the services if necessary. Not everyone gets time off and you wouldn’t want your water delivery or office supply delivery to show up while you’re closed.
7. Make a checklist of all equipment that should be turned off and/or unplugged if your business is going to be closed for a longer-than-usual time. For instance, you should shut down computers instead of just logging off. Printers, copiers, fax machines…etc. should be turned off and perhaps even unplugged.
6. Throw out perishable food items. If you have an office refrigerator, this is the perfect time to clean it out. There’s nothing worse than coming back from a holiday and finding someone’s moldy lunch in the fridge on Monday morning!
5. Check all deadlines to make sure nothing slips through the cracks because of an abbreviated work week. Make sure any weekly reports or projects are either completed early or okay to postpone until Monday.
4. Check your meeting calendar. If you have a weekly meeting every Friday, everyone may assume that it’s been cancelled, but why take the chance? Send out a reminder to all participants letting them know that it is cancelled due to the holiday. This is especially important if you’re group consists of many different companies. Not all will have the Friday after Thanksgiving off and may assume that the meeting is still on.
3. Notify your staff or team members of the dates you’ll be closed. If you’re open for business or giving everyone the Friday after Thanksgiving off, make sure they know it.
2. Notify your clients. Make sure you’ve let all of your clients know the dates that you’ll be closed. If you’re not completely closed, make sure your clients have the contact information of people who are available. Also let your team members/employees know who is scheduled to work and who has taken the day off.
1. Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving!
