In the workplace, taking leave occasionally is a right everyone should enjoy, but when taking leave affects the progress of work, it can lead to a series of problems, primarily impacting coworkers who are left to carry on with normal operations.
When the national holiday dates were announced this year, I noticed there are very few long weekends, and many holidays are not consecutive. For colleagues like us who have regulations about mutual representation and cannot take leave at the same time, I had already anticipated that our most senior production staff, Ms. J, would definitely request leave. Sure enough, at the beginning of this year, Ms. J informed us that she would take two days off to have a continuous five-day 228 holiday. Although there is a bit of resentment, the company cannot arbitrarily deny employees' leave requests, and as colleagues, we have no right to interfere; however, the problem arises because Ms. J did not adequately prepare for the handover of her work before taking leave.
When Ms. J happily headed off on her holiday, as I expected, problems arose at work. She did not properly complete the order handover, and the tasks that were supposed to be done were not adequately addressed. The most tricky issue was that there was an order shipped according to customer deadlines, but Ms. J did not include the customer’s purchase order when preparing the shipping document as required by the customer.
And coincidentally, both the customer and our company's contact person were on leave, leaving our representatives confused about the situation. The driver had arrived at the customer’s location in Keelung and wanted to deliver the goods, but the customer's representative was unable to verify the contents because the shipping document did not have the purchase order attached, and they wanted to refuse the shipment.
After some back and forth, my colleague Ms. H and I, along with colleagues from the design department, coordinated together to finally resolve this issue and successfully completed the order. However, this incident provided us with an important lesson: “While taking leave is everyone's right, it is essential to ensure a complete handover before leaving to avoid confusion and errors.”
Work in the workplace is a process of team collaboration, with each person playing an important role. If one person encounters a problem, the entire team may be affected. Therefore, we should place greater emphasis on the integrity and handover of work, ensuring that every detail is properly addressed to guarantee the smooth progress of operations.