There’s a grim, apologetic vibe to these messages — I’m sorry I’m taking time for myself but I’ll try to check in on occasion! They’re a vivid reflection of a work culture that valorizes constant productivity and the near-total overlap of work and life. But they’re also do a terrible job of what they’re intended to do, e.g., set realistic expectations for both sender and recipient. A vague OOO message traps both parties in an uncomfortable liminal space where both productivity and rest go to die. The original sender is left unsure if they’ll be getting a timely response or a whether the email will go ignored for a time or forever. The original recipient has taken what is a rock solid excuse (time off) and cheapened it, offering a backdoor for email guilt to creep in.
After all, your goal is always to keep your business associates happy. For that reason, you should have a backup co-worker who will cover some of your work while you are not available. Not only is this the professional way to go, but it will also leave your customer satisfied with the company’s service.
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We’re not saying you’re boring but you do work in a fairly serious corporate environment. As a result, your out of office needs to be quite to the point but you also like to throw in a little pitch too, you cheeky sod.
Between now and then, I recommend escaping the summer heat with a delicious Aviation & Tonic. Here’s my recipe:
An out-of-office message is an automatic email sent by an email account that is temporarily not being checked by its owner. Every new email to this account will trigger the out-of-office message, which is sent directly to the original email's sender. Most email service providers allow you to activate this option and customize your message.
Dear all, I am out of the office until 4, February. If you need immediate assistance please send me a message on my cell phone: +111 1111. Otherwise, I will respond to your emails as soon as possible. Thanks, (YOUR NAME)
Amanda works at HubSpot, and she came with a unique auto respondent that asked her contacts to guess where she is. To give background, she flew down to Boston to attend a Red Sox training game in the spring with her father. She chose to ask her contacts whether where they think she might be, and also this played some wonderful use of litotes here:
But you don’t need to write an instruction guide for people as though they’re incapable of solving their own problems without you.
Even if it’s for a short amount of time, an autoresponder helps you enjoy your time off from work.
One-third of employees share information about business travel, including pictures, on social media, Tessian found. Many will also have advance leave notification in email signatures or add details about their time off in their OOO responses, such as when they plan to return to work or the details of the conference they are attending. This might appear safe because this isn’t personal travel. After all, it is a work trip, and an out of office message is no big deal.
An out of office message could become an opportunity to connect with your client on a more personal level. Consider sharing something about yourself that they might not have known about while working with you.
The boss’s thinking was that people who did drivebys looking for you would then email you, see your OOO, and then be able to call you to talk about whatever they were driving by for. No one liked putting their personal contact info so we never worked from home (pre-COVID and pre-VOIP implementation) or told people to IM us and we’d call them.
They only discovered this AFTER the Christmas rush. Thankfully there were no client meltdowns that year or it could have been a lot worse.
Very true, if the options came in reverse order (or maybe emergency first followed by not-urgent followed by urgent) that would be a little better.
OMG if I got this OOO message I would pee my pants laughing! I think its brilliant! (But perhaps thats my weirdness popping out again… shoo shoo get back)
Yupp! At this particular place we had a client who could not get a hold of someone. They made a huge stink about it and this became company policy. We also had to change our VM every night. We also had to reply to any emails we received within 4 hours. Even if we didn’t have an answer.
Out of office emails should be short, succinct, and to the point – and should never include more information than is needed.