When You Are Left Out of the Office Loop
Posted in Workplace Issues
If you are a mobile, corporate employee whose job requires that you travel to far-off destinations every once in a while, chances are you are almost always left out of the loop. Whenever you take a business trip, the important people in your business life assume a range of beliefs about how you will be communicating once you're out of town.
Most people will naively assume that because you're out of the office, you won't be knowledgeable in the different concerns that they will be sending your inbox as well as your iPhone. There will be others who, on the other end of the extreme, will expect you to answer a text message or maybe pick up your Blackberry the second they call as you would your office telephone. In order to keep people who are not from your office from getting wrong notions about your whereabouts, it would be quite prudent of you to take the initiative and maintain healthy communications during a business trip. Part of this process is thoroughly setting expectations.
One of the proactive examples that you could do is to fully explain to your co-workers, clients as well as other important contacts that your responses are only limited to certain situations. This means that only a few situations will merit a call, text or email from you. If the situation is that one of your peers needs a very important document and can't find it the template because he lost it, you might explain that a call would only be entertained if something like that happened. Anything else such as trivial questions should be reserved for when you get back to your workplace.
Also, one thing that you could do in order to maintain the sanity of your co-workers and clients is to remind them of the level of receptiveness that you will be giving the whole time that you're away. It would be definitely frustrating for your key contacts to suddenly just stop receiving updates from you just because they didn't know that you were going to go on a vacation. Inform your contacts that you'll be out and will probably be out of reach unless it is an urgent matter. Otherwise, you'll be digging yourself a deep hole to climb out of if you don't give them the heads up.
Try to get a backup phone that key people in your business can call whenever they have a serious, urgent request or inquiry on their hands. It is very assuring for the people you work for and with to know that they are able to contact you whenever they need to. Call it an emergency number, your own personal "bat phone" or anything actually. The point is they should be able to get in touch with you when it comes to serious matters.
So always remember to inform the people you work with and work for how available you'll be whenever you're in a business trip. Get in touch with them only when the situation is very important. Otherwise, you'll lose precious time, gain a few irate clients and probably chase yourself off a promotion. Keep the lines open and keep people informed.
