Clarify the dates and staffing
Distinguish your personal absence from an office that is genuinely closing. If colleagues continue working, shared equipment must not simply be switched off or locked away. Record which days somebody will be present and which areas must remain accessible. A replacement needs this information before the final afternoon, particularly where keys or access permissions have to be arranged.
List appointments falling within the absence: deliveries, maintenance visits, collections and agreed discussions. Decide individually whether each appointment remains, transfers to someone else or moves to another date. An email absence message does not automatically change these arrangements. Notify the people concerned directly and keep confirmations where the person covering can find them.
Make ongoing work transferable
For each open matter, start with its current position, the next required action and a link to the supporting material. Say specifically what is being awaited and who should respond. A long history of every discussion is less useful than knowing that approval is expected on Wednesday. Explicitly identify work that may wait for your decision rather than leaving the replacement to guess.
Test important access with the person covering. A file path is useless if it can only be reached through your personal account. Use the established sharing and permission processes rather than handing over personal passwords. Agree where questions will be collected so that the same issue is not raised through several channels at once. Also define which circumstances genuinely justify contacting you during the absence.
Treat equipment according to its function
Do not make a blanket rule to unplug everything. Shared network equipment, agreed backup processes and other ongoing functions may depend on powered devices. Ask the responsible person which equipment must remain on and which should be shut down according to its instructions. Identify necessary exceptions where someone making a final round would need to decide, without displaying sensitive access information.
Save personal work in the designated system and check that required transfers have completed. An open document on a locked laptop is not a handover. Remove portable storage and personal devices from shared connections unless they are explicitly needed for ongoing work. Avoid technical changes immediately before departure when nobody will be available afterwards to assess their effects.
Include rooms and incoming mail
Walk through the rooms actually in use, checking windows, exposed documents and agreed access routes. Follow local locking procedures so that people still working are not shut out. Remove perishable personal food and arrange ordinary waste disposal. Plant care needs a specific agreement rather than an unspoken expectation that the next colleague will take responsibility.
Settle how incoming post and parcels will be handled. A named person should know which items they may open and where these should go afterwards. Existing responsibilities still apply to confidential mail. Avoid an undifferentiated collection point where urgent correspondence can disappear among advertising material. Where relevant, note how missed deliveries will be recognised and dealt with.
Prepare for the return
Choose one shared place for updates made during the absence. Decisions, completed tasks and outstanding questions should be recorded briefly there. Allow time on returning to read this information before resuming old work. This prevents repeating completed actions or overlooking a decision that changed while you were away.
The final walk-through should be a check, not the first planning session. Use a short list tailored to your office and remove items that do not apply there. After returning, add anything that genuinely proved missing. The list stays manageable because it reflects experience with the actual arrangements rather than trying to cover every imaginable situation. Keep its owner clear so that outdated instructions do not quietly survive into the next absence.
