Long-term trust in team members
If you do not trust your team and feel a constant need to check what they are doing, then you are justified in assuming you should worry about what will happen in your absence. But at the same time, you have a deeper, more long-term problem, namely micro-management.
Your long-term goal should thus be to train your employees so that you can trust them and give them enough power to avoid their having to wait for you with every decision. Your goal as a team leader should not involve following employees' every step, but rather establishing a mindset, plus an understanding of priorities and the overall context, so that staff can work on their own without having to follow a strictly set-up procedure. Then you need not worry about any major errors or deviations during your absence because general rules and priorities have long-term validity and employees are able to work independently without being monitored by their superior.
System of work delegation
As CIO states, a well set-up system of work delegation is the be-all and end-all of successful communication between manager and team. Allocate tasks among individual workers and determine who is responsible for what. This is the only way to ensure individual team members will give 100% in various specific situations. Your instructions should cover a wide range of situations that may arise; after returning, go over the various cases and projects with individual employees, even if there were no complications.
A good reporting system
Another way to ensure the team is working as it should in your absence is to set up an effective reporting and analysis system that allows you easily to review your employees' work. If the analytical tools and reporting are properly set up, you need not worry about reduced efficiency in your employees' work because, when you return, you will easily be able to see how each employee was working.
In the long run, it is essential you implement the use of high-quality software and analytical systems that will allow you to analyse the effectiveness of individual team members, who will become aware of this fact and thus know that even in your absence you will be able to analyse their performance retrospectively.
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