Best practice - how to handle someone's tasks who is unexpectedly away sick?

English Forum Team Onboarding
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a team member In a remote location is away sick. How can someone pick up the ball and handle their tasks while they’re away? Does the backup person have to be assigned as collaborator of all tasks to start with so they can report on main person’s tasks and take them over?
Thanks

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This probably depends on the nature of the tasks being assigned to this person. The way I see it there are three scenarios:

  1. These are tasks that your whole team can have access to or are related to a larger project that your team is working on. In this situation, you should be able to go to that project → sort by assignee → reassign any time sensitive tasks assigned to this person to someone else.

  2. These are tasks that are not related to a larger team project, but aren’t sensitive or are being assigned primarily by you. In this situation, you (as the assignee) likely have access to these tasks and can view them on this person’s My Task list (You can get there by searching for their name and clicking on the result). From their My Tasks list, you can reassign any time sensitive tasks.

  3. These are tasks that you do not have access to or are privately assigned to this person. In this situation, you’ll want to set expectations with the sick or absent person that they reassign tasks (if possible) before they go out of office.

Hopefully that helps!

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Thanks very much Daniel.

I’m in situation 3.

My team member A has assigned many time sensitive tasks in a regular and detailed project template to person B who is not in our company but with whom we work regularly (we are their distributor). They are in an opposite Timezone too!

We have a risk of delays because person B is often away and doesn’t reassig their tasks to their backup person C.
Person B has asked us to assign person C as a collaborator to all of their tasks as a solution.
Is this the most efficient and effective way to handle this situation?
I don’t think person C can run a report of person B’s task and then take them on?

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Thank you for bringing this topic up @Heather_Rutherford. I’m interested to see what the suggested protocol is for this situation.

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