(originally published April 24th, 2005)

My wife went away for a conference this weekend; she left Thursday afternoon, and won’t be back until late Sunday evening.

One would think that, as a grown man, I would treat this time as if it were any other day. However, we have no children, I work for myself, and so I was free to do a few things I probably wouldn’t have done with her home, including eating some things I normally wouldn’t have had the opportunity to eat.

Why am I telling on myself like this? To prove a point, and to relate it to working with employees, who among us hasn’t felt like a great weight hasn’t been lifted off us at work when the person we report to isn’t there? Sometimes you treat it as a usual occurrence, but other times you’ll take that opportunity to do, or not do, something that you might not have done if that person was around. Sometimes you produce better work if you’ve been feeling pressure, sometimes you don’t work because you don’t have anything expected of you for that day; or so you feel.

As with everything else, if there are plans and expectations it’s harder to deviate from the norm. The plans don’t have to be all that rigid; for instance, if my wife had left and there was food I didn’t have to take a lot of time to prepare, I might have stayed home and cooked for myself; maybe not. At work, if you know you’re not going to be around, no matter how good your employees are, you need to make sure to set the goal and duties and standards you want to see from them when you get back.

Either that, or just know that your time off is your employees time off, and deal with it when you get back to the office, whenever that is.