How to plan your Working Holidays?
Working Anywhere empowers people to make an impact from wherever they choose to work. It redefines traditional concepts and creates space to pursue things that are close to your heart. The little things like exploring a new city, attending that important family barbecue, delivering a speech at your best friend’s wedding or keeping traditions alive by watching a game with your parents.
Find out the benefits of Working Holiday!
Make a list of must-haves for working on holidays.
Employees who worked during their holidays have reportedly enjoyed their vacation better and are likely to be less stressed when they get back to work. Working from Anywhere opens you up to an opportunity where you go forward with your personal goals without hitting a pause on your professional ones. In this post, we break down the essentials that help you pull off a perfect vacation while working from #Anywhere.
Myth Busting
Working from the exotic beaches of Seychelles has quite a ring to it and it is perhaps the first thing that pops in your mind when you explore the idea of a working holiday. We can’t really blame you for thinking that way. Some countries permit people who work from Anywhere to carry out their work requirements while some prohibit you from working on a tourist visa. Working from Anywhere in different countries will also depend on the country you are from because the Visa will be tied to the passport you have.
Before planning a holiday to another country, check if your visa type permits you to conduct business, host meetings or work during your stay. If you plan on engaging in any form of local work in the country you are visiting, it is important that you understand the restrictions that are in place according to the visa you carry. Violations could lead to legal action or sometimes even deportation.
The right tools go a long way
Ensure you are in a noise-free place when working!
A good internet connection and software tools that facilitate communication are integral in helping you stay connected with your team. A disruption in one of these could amount to a great deal of stress to you on your Holiday. If you are likely to be put up in a hotel during your vacation, ensure that the hotel offers good Wi-Fi. It is also important that you comply with any privacy policy implemented by your organization/ mandated by your client while you work. Always ensure you have an active mobile data plan that you can fall back on if the hotel Wi-Fi provided doesn’t work.
Like unreliable Wi-Fi, there could be region-based restrictions/unavailability on applications that you regularly use while working. For eg, apps that use VoIP for video and audio calls are banned in the UAE. This means, if you plan to stay in the UAE, you will be unable to make calls on Skype for team or client meetings. Before the holiday begins, find out if the work-based tools you use are supported in the country/region you plan to visit. If the apps you use are unavailable or banned, find reliable alternatives that work in the region. Ensure that you always bypass any region-based restriction legally while working during your vacation.
Establish a proper chain of command
Right before you leave, it is important that you have your team on the same page. Give them a clear picture of your travel plan, the preferred time they can contact you, situations when they must contact you and the go-to person they should reach out to in your absence. Use appropriate after-hours email response, status in your communication tools and voice messages for your business line. Give your team any alternate numbers they can use to contact you.
If you have any open correspondence or priority clients, assign them to team members who will handle them in your absence. It is important to explain what these new responsibilities demand from your team members. A working holiday makes it impossible for you to stay connected to your computer while you are snorkeling near the cost of a Caribbean Island. Frustrated customers/clients can contact you anytime during your vacation, with the right planning and the right team member, you can ensure their grievances are addressed as soon as possible.
How to handle angry customers while you are in a working Holiday?
Communicate Ground Rules
When you travel with family or stay at someone’s place during your trip, communicating ground rules can save your work holiday. Discuss how your host and family can help create a distraction-free environment for you to work. It could be a room on a different floor, or a space with minimal interference where you can take calls, pass on updates, attend stand-ups and more. Print a message and stick it on the door of your work area. Your message should convey that you cannot be disturbed while working (unless the place is on fire!).
How you time your work during the vacation is also important. You can set up an itinerary that works for the people around you when you are engaged with work. However, once you log off from work, head back and share responsibilities such as preparing food, planning out things and spending some quality time for the rest of the day. By taking a share of the responsibilities, you recognize the effort others put in so that you can work right where you are.
Time your work efficiently while on working holidays
The best of both worlds
Working Anywhere unchains you from your default office desks and lets you turn a hotel room or a tiny room into your temporary workspace. During your vacation, forecast the times when your team will not be occupied with a lot of work. The flexibility of a working holiday sometimes comes with an opportunity to transform a 3-day weekend into an extended time off.
With time off for a couple of days and work taking a back seat, you get to discover more time to do what you love. The time that can be used to meet the goals of your visit like exploring the local culture or spending more time with friends and family.
Working holidays encourage more people to travel, to unwind, to discover a place they’ve dreamed about or to connect with family and friends who stay far away. Working Anywhere gives opportunities for people to experience surreal emotions of joy, love, and awe without consuming their paid time off or a heavy bite off their savings. With happier people, we create a happier ecosystem of resourceful talent who together can create solutions that ignite a spark and make our planet a better place to live.