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Medsin's Good Handover Guide

Introduction

The prospect of handing over your role to someone else can be a little daunting - where do you start? Hopefully you realise that everyone has a unique way of looking at the same situation, so they are unlikely to be a carbon copy of you! Rather than enforcing your own methods of doing things, it might be better to approach handover by asking yourself "What would really help my successor to get things going?"

Some tips for getting started...

1. Face-to-face handover. If it’s not possible, then do it via phone calls.

2. Early Involvement - start to involve your successor in your work straight after the elections.

3. Set a date when your successor will take over from you completely. It is useful to have a clear division of tasks during the handover period - agree on who should do what.

4. Send your successor forwards and carbon copies of relevant emails that you receive and send. This may be on anything from external contacts to difficult members of your working group. When you cc your successor on an email, you may want to take the opportunity to introduce her/him to the recipients.

5. Long-term follow up. It is good practice for out-going committee members to have an advisory period for one year after handover. However, it is a good to agree with your successor on your degree of involvement after your agreed handover date so that she/he neither feels totally abandoned nor stalked.

6. Receiving relevant e-documents - make sure you copy your archives and organise them so that it's easy for you successor to read through them (name the documents and folders with self-explanatory names and delete all irrelevant ones). Go through the documents with your successor (this will remind you of lots of things that you have forgotten to tell them already).

Hint: Make a CD-ROM for your successor with the archives

Writing a Handover Manual

You may want to produce a handover manual. This is a tool that should provide you with the information needed to be in charge of a given position. It should be like a memory card that holds all information that’s useful to your successor.

Remember that a handover manual is not a proper manual - it should not describe in detail what to do, when, how and why. Instead it should just hold the information needed for your successor to figure his or her way to do things.

It should include as much information as possible - it would be great if it at least included:

• A description of the purpose of the position
• A brief outline of tasks fulfilled and work done during your term
• Administration
• Which bylaws pertain to your role
• What needs to be worked on during the next term
• Email lists or yahoo groups your successor should sign up to
• Minutes & reports from meetings
• Information about the committee (its running, task division, periods of the year that are very active, etc).
• National Medsin - who you work with (e.g. VPB), your responsibilities as a member of Medsin, likewise the National Committees responsibilities to you, and national events.
• General Assemblies
• External Relations and who to contact
• Work started but not completed
• Calendar of the year with the most important dates
• Suggestions to avoid / solve problems

Hint: Start writing your handover manual from the day you start working! Have a word-document on your computer where you write down activities/tips as you go through the year. This is the best way of not forgetting anything important, and securing a thorough handover.

REMEMBER! If you don’t pass on your knowledge, a lot of the things you have done will be useless after you have gone.

Please find a branch president handover template attached to the top of this page. Please feel free to use it for your handover.

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Last updated on Thursday 20 December 2007 at 18:55.