GENERAL – How To – Cover Absence

Purpose of this SQ How To: Ensure responsibilities are covered effectively when an individual has a planned or unplanned absence.

Applicable to: All (Especially Leads and Managers)

Customers: All

Timescale: Potentially several hours to organise. Implementation will extend for the duration of the absence.

Introduction

Ensuring that all responsibilities of an executive or Lead’s work are covered in the case of an absence, both planned and unplanned, is vital to ensure there are no bottlenecks of work or other complications.

Planned Absence

A planned absence within SQ Digital will usually be pre-booked annual leave through Quest, which is accepted by a line manager at least two weeks before the holiday takes place.

In this case, the line manager of the employee who will be taking annual leave should meet with the employee to discuss workload for the period of annual leave.

If the annual leave is a period of one to four days in length, the line manager should meet with the employee who is due to be on leave at least 5 working days before they are due to take annual leave.

If the annual leave is a period of a week or more, the line manager should meet with the employee who is due to be on leave at least 10 working days before they are due to take annual leave.

During the meeting between the line manager and employee, the following should be discussed:

Any priority work that needs to be completed before the employee begins their period of annual leave.
Any work that could be handed over to another employee but may need information passing over to complete the task.
Any work that can be simply transferred to another executive with no handover of information.
Any meetings that may need another executive to attend in the absentee’s place.
Any overdue tasks that may need further explanation.
Any assigned work that may cause issues when the executive returns from their holiday.

During this process, the executive will need to make appropriate notes against any tasks that may need further explanation. This information will also be used during the handover of tasks to another executive.

Following this meeting, the work will be redistributed to other executives by the line manager, with the help of the project managers if needed.

Upon the return of the employee – a meeting will be held between the employee who has been on annual leave and their line manager, to ensure the work is handed back over properly and minimise disruption within the team.

Things that should be discussed in this meeting are as followed:

Any outstanding work that was not completed whilst the employee was absent.
Any work that urgently needs completing.
Any changes that may have occurred in the time the employee was on annual leave.

Unplanned Absence

An unplanned absence within SQ Digital will usually come about through illness of an employee who is unable to come into work.

In this case, work cannot be planned in before the illness is reported in the first instance.

When an employee learns of an absence, this needs to be reported to the line manager and project managers immediately.

The line manager/PMs will then have a meeting to look at the absentees:

Tasks due on the day of absence
Any late tasks
Any important tasks coming up in the immediate future.
Any meetings that may need covering by another executive
Any other tasks the absentee may be roadblocking

The line manager/PMs should also prepare for the scenario that the employee will be off for a period longer than one working day. This will mean taking measures to ensure any workload from the coming days can be completed by another member of the team if the employee is off for an extended period.

Once the absentee returns, any outstanding work needs to be highlighted to the absentee to ensure this is prioritised. A meeting should be held between the line manager and the absentee to ensure the employee can catch up with everything they may have missed in their time off.

Things that should be discussed in this meeting are as followed:

Any outstanding work that was not completed whilst the employee was absent.
Any work that urgently needs completing.