Covering for a colleague - handover question

[LookItsMeAgain]

If a colleague of yours was responsible for a fairly important process in work and needed you to cover for them (as in fulfil their role) while they’re on leave, would you expect said colleague to have whatever documentation is required to do the role already prepared or would you accept that you might have to create some of the job aids yourself (from scratch) with some guidance from said colleague?

I'd expect it was all there and ready to go.

I would expect it all.there (unless colleague has had to leave abruptly) .

If a plannned handover, the opppprtunity to meet/discuss so you could ask questions (if not with colleague with someone else involved).

If none pf this has happened and you feeling a little nervous/not fully informed, speak to to someone.

Said colleague wants to schedule a meeting in the next two days with me sharing my screen and they’ll tell me which bits I should screenshot and put into a job aid, rather than actually having the documents done themselves.

I don’t want to come across as complaining to my team leader but I’m really not happy about how this is being handled.

What are the issues about doing it the way your colleague has proposed OP?

I was expecting the documentation to be already prepared so that I could review it and raise any questions, rather than being the one actually preparing the documentation.

This is why I’m wondering if I am being unreasonable - if I were going on leave and needed to hand over to my colleagues, I would make sure that any documents/job aids needed were ready, they could review them and then if necessary, I could demonstrate to them.

I have my own role to fulfill while providing cover for this colleague.

Perhaps they think this method will help you understand better than just gavong a document to read?

I’ve asked for them to document their process. How would I know what their process is in order to document it?
Would you normally expect the person providing cover for you to document your processes before you go on leave?

It's not unusual for someone in my industry to walk you through a process - you get to make your own notes and ask any questions.

Not all tasks/processes are documented.

Agreed. I'm owner of several processes at my work, when someone new starts I walk them through the processes one to one and show them where everything is. I do mail links along with the intro but depending on what they need to focus on it's up to them to take notes.

I do get the point about making my own notes and asking questions, but to make my own job aid documenting an entire process that this colleague owns??

Surely if you were expecting a process to be maintained during your absence, you would document it or maybe I'm expecting too much here.

I don't think you're expecting too much. I always do a written handover if I go on annual leave.

I think maybe it depends on the industry or the process in question or the work culture.

Ok - so I've had the 2 Teams chats with the person who is going on leave and they were all over the place and not taking me through their processes that they use from the start of the process to the end.
I tried to bring the conversation back to "Well, how do you start this off? Talk to me as if I don't know anything about the process at all and you're training in a new person and not someone on your team." because some of the technology that this team member uses is not something that I actually use in my day to day tasks that I look after myself.
We have covered some stuff but it's all over the place and while it might be second nature to the person that I'm covering for, it really isn't second nature to me, and no, by what I'm hearing, there are no job aids already documented for this stuff (which I would think is a single point of failure if this person was on extended leave for any reason or they won the lottery and quit the next day kind of scenario) it seems that all of the relevant information is in this person's head and not anywhere that a new starter in the team could pick it up and teach themselves how to do the job.

I'm really surprised that our team leader hasn't asked to see something before this person goes on nearly a month's leave and yet expects me to be able to step in and do as good a job as the colleague.

That's what I would think should be in place if you're going on leave or moving out of a team so that your colleagues can at least for the start of your absence muddle through.

I always write instructions for those covering for me.

Presumably the persons line manager could do this task if they left? Or is that not the case?

Is there anything of your workload you can pass on? If you mention to your manager that the handover is taking xxx time, so you are struggling to get y done, then it can be taken from you?

Not ever going to happen in my role. It's too complex and would end up with about 9 separate collections of encyclopaedia brittanica in four dimensions to get even part of it. Which would mean I didn't actually get to do it because I'd be too busy creating the constantly changing and evolving documentation.

I would expect a helpful hand over which ever way it happens, if I didn't feel I was getting the information I needed I'd flag it up with my manager.

Depends, really.

If getting all the stuff together is a big task and the colleague literally doesn't have time to do it on top of their normal job, I'd expect the person covering to do it. If it's something they easily could have put together in advance in their normal working time, I'd expect the original person to do it.

I guess it depends how you see someone covering work. To me, that's not someone doing me a personal favour. That's the business finding a way to cover my work while I'm unable to do it (for whatever reason). So I wouldn't be expecting to "atone" for putting the cover person out by doing half the work myself.

From what you describe, this is a single point of failure and if anything happened to this colleague, the company would struggle to complete the process.

Is there another way of doing it? Ideally at the very minimum, at least two or three people need to be able to do it and there needs to be a complete written instruction, that is available in your company procedures so anyone could pick it up.

You need to ask your Team Leader for guidance, but bear in mind it might not be necessary to do the process in exactly the same way as this colleague is doing things and it could be that you might be able to find a way to complete the process in a simpler way and write the instructions for that. But you need to be given time to do so, or have other work reallocated/paused.

I've just been given a new big task from a colleague that is winding down to retirement and it is already clear that it is currently handled in an inefficient and often bizarre fashion and I'm already making a lot of changes.

Being completely honest, were the two handovers really that bad or were you resistant because you're pissed off?

You would think but it's quite a specialised task that this person does, so not the case here.

I was hoping they were going to go better than they did. I was pissed off but the colleague was flitting all over the place and didn't have a clear instruction or way to get across what was necessary. I really did have to ask them to explain it to me like I was a new starter in the team as that focused their minds more on how to get the relevant salient processes and points that they carry out done.
There were still some gaps by the time I finished up yesterday but when I logged in this morning, there were a few emails from the colleague waiting for me and they will no doubt help.

One of the tasks that I do in the team is to maintain our job aids and training materials for our area so now that I have this information, if I get time during this colleagues absence, I will bring them into the catalogue of training materials and job aids for our team using our templates etc. as they were written without any of the usual formatting (this is a cosmetic issue and not the underlying issue that they weren't there in the first place).