How To Prep For Vacation With Hive

Ah, summer. A time of sun, fun, and typically, a vacation. In 2020, that may look quite a bit different from what vacation looked like in 2019, but it’s still important to take time to rest, relax and recharge. It’s actually considered more important now than ever, as we’re mostly working remote and the lines between work time and personal time have become blurry. For many people, it’s been hard to close their computer or log off of Hive or Slack at the end of the day — their computer is in the other room as they’re watching TV or eating dinner, so can’t they just log back in to answer that one email?

Technically, yes, but it’s better to draw up firm boundaries between work and personal time. A few ways you can do that are to set strict “work hours” for yourself, and follow them. For example, set the rule that you’ll start working at 9 AM and finish working at 6 PM every day. Allow yourself the opportunity to log into work after 6 PM for emergencies or high-priority items, but otherwise, stay away from the computer.

Another way to maintain a healthy work-life balance is by taking one (or more) vacation days. It’s been proven that vacations have a beneficial effect on mental, emotional and physical health, with a few positive effects including reduced stress, decrease in the creation of the stress hormone cortisol, decreased burnout, and more solid personal relationships.

But it’s a pain to spend time preparing and getting ready to take vacation — making sure everything is in order before you leave is the opposite of relaxing. That’s where Hive comes in. Here are a few ways you can utilize Hive to have the most relaxing vacation ever.

Set your vacation status

First things first, it’s time to set your emoji status. By adding a vacation-style emoji to your status, this signals to everyone that you’re unavailable. My personal favorite is the 🌴or 🌞. Obviously, it’s also helpful to send a group message, either in your team’s individual Hive chat or in a larger group, to let people know you’ll be OOO.

Assign coworkers high-priority tasks

No matter how much you prep before your vacation, there are going to be things you’ll need help with. Easily alert coworkers to tasks that you need their help on, either by adding them as a follower to a card, adding them as an assignee to a card, assigning them a subtask within a larger card, or tagging them in the comments explaining the task at hand. This is helpful even if it is a task that may or may not be relevant when you’re out — it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Create a form for all questions that come in while you’re out

Instead of letting questions pile up in your Hive messaging panel while you’re on vacation, simply create a form to intake any non-urgent questions people might have. You can do that easily in Hive by going to your upper right hand corner drop down, and clicking “Forms” under the “Adding Actions” section. From there, you can create a form and share with the team. Don’t forget to set all submitted forms to come in as individual tasks in a project — this will help you keep tabs on all requests.

Provide an overview of all projects to your manager with Portfolio View

With Hive’s Portfolio View, you’re easily able to see all project progress, down to the individual tasks, on one screen. By creating a Portfolio View with all of your projects and tasks, your manager will quickly be able to see status and progress across all projects. This will prevent them from pinging you or asking about any of your completed or current tasks.

Leave your manager or team an “OOO Guide” in Hive Notes

Using Hive Notes, create an OOO Guide listing out all of the things that people might need to know when you’re gone. That can include passwords to platforms they might not know how to log into, information on how to update information in a specific portal, etc. In Hive Notes, you can also assign actions items and next steps, which could be useful as you’re listing out all to-dos that might need to be taken care of while you’re away.

Enable focus mode in Hive

Ok, we’re cheating a bit here. This isn’t a feature officially in Hive, but it’s coming soon. In the next few months, you’ll be able to pause all Hive notifications, limiting anything that can pull you out of your relaxing vacation status.

These are just a few of the ways you can utilize Hive to prep for some fun in the sun or a staycation. Do you have any other recommendations for ways to utilize the platform before you head OOO? Let us know in the comments below.