Houston, Texas (NAPSI) - With a little preparation and smart technology to support you, you can take a vacation without becoming stressed about what will happen while you’re away from the office. Here are a few helpful tips to get you started:

1. Understand the key deliverables that need to be met while you’re out. Thinking through these in advance will not only help you organize, but will also help you delegate and feel less stressed that something might slip through the cracks.

2. Don’t be cryptic. Provide clear instructions, communicate deadlines and establish shared expectations for everything. This sets people up for success and makes them happier about helping you.

3. Let your team know when you’ll be on vacation well in advance, not just your manager. This helps your co-workers prepare for upcoming fluctuations in workload. It can also be helpful to keep a central calendar detailing everyone’s vacation time. This will let everyone know who’s in and who’s out, and can help others prepare for their own vacations accordingly.

4. Use collaboration technology to help your team coordinate projects, track schedules and stay on task. Collaboration technology allows you to see the big picture while organizing assigned tasks, sharing details and tracking progress on projects, even while you’re gone.

5. Don’t just assign—provide the information that people need to do the job, and keep all this information in a central location. This might include contracts, graphics, relevant documents or e-mail threads—anything that will help co-workers get the job done.

Collaboration technologies serve your needs and the needs of your entire team, setting everyone up for success, especially when someone is out of the office. Using collaboration technologies that provide smartphone or other mobile-device access, like Smartsheet, has the added advantage of allowing you to monitor projects from anywhere—even while you’re relaxing by the pool. Vacations should be a time to unplug from work, but when you’re leaving behind a full slate of projects for others to manage in your absence, the ability to check in from afar can sometimes make it easier to enjoy your time away. If you follow the above tips, however, you might not feel the need to check in at all.

Learn More

You can find further facts and tips at www.smartsheet.com or by calling (877) 765-0702.