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When you’re trying to contact someone on a matter of importance (or even urgency) on one side of the equation and you find out via an autoresponder that they are away for vacation, it can be incredibly frustrating unless they’ve done the front-end work beforehand. (I’m speaking from personal – and recent – experience here. And worse, there was no auto-responder set up. I had to use the – gasp! – telephone to find out what was going on.)
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She continues: “However, there should be a way for whoever is emailing you to have an urgent request handled, and that should be included as part of your OOO as well as being known to your work team (supervisor and colleagues). That might look like including a coworker's email on your OOO or it might simply involve setting a forwarding rule for while you're away, so that your email goes to the colleague who's covering.”
Finally, if leaving a private mobile phone feels like revealing too much, you can instruct your customers to contact you via email with the “URGENT” referenced in its subject:
An out-of-office message is an automatic response to emails you receive that lets the sender know you’re not currently working.
I do typically come back to hundreds of emails, and I prioritize what to read – things from my boss/leadership are first, followed by communication from my direct reports. I also sort them by conversation thread and read the end of them first, which reduces the burden.
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This article originally appeared on The Daily Muse and is reprinted with permission.
Usually, people take leave for vacation, business traveling, maternity leave, or sickness. Additionally, sometimes employees who will no longer work in a company also need to provide an out-of-office message for their customers, especially if they are in a high-level management position working closely with those customers.
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Thanks for your email. Right now I am camping in the countryside with my family which means I will be completely switching off from all technology for a few days (gasp!).
How to enable Multi Factor Authentication (MFA) when traveling outside the United States.
If your request is urgent, don’t sit around. Send your request to [contact’s name] at [contact’s email].
Perhaps I’m you guys’ worst nightmare, but for the past couple of years I’ve been writing haikus for my OOO, which give a flavour of what I’m out doing. A couple of examples:
I guess my first instinct might be thinking it’s rude but having seen it a few times I do get it. It really makes sense for people who get dozens or hundreds of emails a day and are gone for extended periods of time. It’s more courteous to be up front about it than silently delete like some people said they do (though I get they maybe just didn’t realize they’d need to do that).
I am currently in London. My Inbox didn’t join me on this trip, so I’ll be sure to answer your msg as soon as I return back on Wednesday, MARCH XX, 2XXX.
Thank you for your message! I'm out of the office from X DATE to Y DATE and will not be checking email. I'll follow up with you as soon as possible upon my return. If you have an urgent request, please contact XX person at YY email address.