Hello, It’s that time of the year. The time where I save up all my vacation (4 weeks) and spend it on one epic adventure. Where am I? [COUNTRY], the land of magic realism. And I’ll be completely disconnected. In fact, I’ve asked [NAME] from IT to change my password so I can’t check my email at all. #vacationorbust. If you have any questions about [PROMOTION] or anything else, get in touch with [NAME] at [EMAIL] If you want to talk about the hottest job opening at [COMPANY], [POSITION/TITLE] get in contact with our People and Culture team at [EMAIL].
Education Details: If you are planning to head out on vacation or step away from your office for a few days- creating an out of office autoresponder email message is … out of the office email template
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Something about it gets my goat up! Like she’s working and emailing me about things she wants me to work on, but her OOO is telling me to buzz off coz she’s too busy to get to my emails. Also she still has it set up and we’ve been in lockdown for over a week. How long does she intend to have her OOO triaging everything and making excuses for delays? We all know there’s a lockdown, that’s why everyone is scrambling for their events to be rescheduled – it just comes across as very self-important at a time where everyone is under stress. No one else in the organisation has this so it seems very bizarre to have an OOO while still working!
Sorry I missed you. I’ll be out of the office and slow to respond until after the break. While I have you, though, help settle an argument among my colleagues and me: Die Hard 1: The Office Christmas Party Gone Wrong. Die Hard 2: Airport Conspiracy. Die Hard 3: Samuel L. Jackson. Enough said. Die Hard 4: Cyberthreat. Die Hard 5: You should probably not pick this one. Impossible! It’s like choosing a favorite child!
This is the dream. If I could do this, I would! I hate voicemails (and the phone in general) so, so much!
Kat is a Midwest-based freelance writer, covering topics related to careers, productivity, and the freelance life. In addition to The Muse, she's a contributor all over the web and dishes out research-backed advice for places like Atlassian, Trello, Toggl, Wrike, The Everygirl, FlexJobs, and more. She's also an Employment Advisor at a local college, and loves helping students prepare to thrive in careers (and lives!) they love. When she manages to escape from behind her computer screen, she's usually babying her two rescue mutts or continuing her search for the perfect taco. Say hi on Twitter @kat_boogaard or check out her website.
It is important to understand that your auto-response message can go to anybody, even your top management people. Try to avoid any embarrassment by taking the time to proofread the message.
With all these changes, the simplest tasks come saddled with a lot of extra questions. Take the out-of-office message. Do you really need an out-of-office autoresponse if you haven’t seen an office since March? The simple answer is yes.
“I’m not in the office. I’m spending time with my children and that’s far more important than absolutely anything you could be after”
If you don’t clearly state the dates on which you will be disconnected from work, your office co-workers and clients will most likely send you multiple emails, clogging your inbox. That will make it quite difficult for you to catch up when you get back. Also, if you don’t include the name and contact information in your outgoing message for the co-workers who can help in your absence, your well-deserved and pleasant vacation time could get in the way of specific projects in the company.
(Obviously, it wouldn’t fly in all cultures, but I do think this should be more normalised.)
Same. All you need to know is I am not available and you are not going to hear from me until such and such date and contact so and so if you need something sooner.
Yep. When I was at an on-call job and sometimes had to check email while I was off it was a little more tailored; I would specify whether I had access to email or not, and give more detailed info on who to contact for what if I didn’t. Nowadays this is fine. And fine for me on the other end as well. I just need the relevant info, it’s not remotely a big deal if someone’s out.
But this is where it becomes a power thing. The OOO person says that everyone else wants stuff from them that the sender can’t get elsewhere and you need to grovel to get it from them.
It is entirely possible to enjoy a podcast and hate voicemail, nothing about issues with human voices.
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I know a lot of people who never vacation for more than a few days because the email backlog becomes incredibly stressful upon their return; this is one way to meaningfully combat that which is somewhat in the employee’s control.