I mean, this is what I pretty much did upon returning from my maternity leaves but I would never put it into an email! My maternity leave OOO was the vague “I am on extended leave and am not anticipated to return until X. Please contact Joe or Fergus in my absence.” X being a vague time-frame based on my due date and the length of my leave. No one is waiting 3+ months for an answer so I did get to delete most of the 500 emails I got during my most recent leave! I did once have someone internal tell me I should say maternity leave rather than leave, but really, what does it matter? I’m gone for a few months and no one outside of the company really NEEDS to know why.
The kicker is that they all get back on August 1st and are mad that their projects haven’t moved forward.
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I do this because my industry’s norm is that people check their email on vacation, at least once or twice, but I don’t do it. I don’t have work email on my phone so it’s technically true.
That 15minute breaktime message screams “past experience with a toxic company” to me.
The best voicemail greeting I’ve ever encountered went like this: “If you’re hearing this message, please hang up and send me a text. I haven’t checked my voicemail since 2010.” And true to form, the mailbox was full and not accepting messages at that time. I appreciated her honesty!
Thank you for your note. I’m currently out of the office, returning on [date]. I’ll respond to your message then.
Greatest update to Outlook, ever. We also got this feature for our office VM, and, as a chronic forgot-to-reset-my-VMer, it’s great not to have the first line of EVERY VM my first week back be, “Hey, your OOO message is still on….”.
Check this for How to set an Out Of Office reply messages in Outlook[Tutorial/Step by Step Guide]
Website: https://www.xink.io/email-signature-marketing/five-simple-tips-to-create-happy-holidays-email-signature/
For example, if you don’t clearly state the dates you’ll be gone, your office coworkers and clients might send you multiple emails, clogging your inbox and making it difficult for you to catch up when you're back. And if you don’t include the name and contact information in your outgoing message for the coworkers who can help in your absence, your well-earned vacation time might get in the way of ongoing projects at the company.
Giving the option to contact an email address containing “interruptyourvacation” provides two things — 1) A dose of humor, and 2) discouragement from actually doing what the name suggests. Plus, he prefaces it with a request for empathy, by explaining that he promised quality time to his family.
But I'm someone who has co-workers in almost every time zone, on almost every continent, and in almost every geographic region, and I simply can't imagine using most of these examples with co-workers in, say, South Korea or Japan or Nicaragua. Like, the account manager who reaches out to me for help accessing a particular system in Seoul doesn't need my personal story about why I'm taking time off and all the fun (or, for that matter, not fun) things that I'll be doing — they need help gaining access to [system] in order to complete the job tasks that have been assigned to them. If I am not available to help them, they need to know who can, and if there just *isn't* anyone else who can perform this task, they need to know when I will be able to.
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In case of maternity leave, make sure that you set up a long-term out of office message.
(Aside: at my job, when you open a new browser window, a random picture of employee pets pops up. It changes every time. I could just refresh all day long.)
With an out of office email, you provide the following information, preferably in a unique way: At the moment, you are not available;The exact time (date) of your return;Contact information (phone number) for urgent cases;Contact information of colleagues to be contacted in your absence;
A virtual business phone system like Grasshopper can help you create a professional, reliable voicemail greeting. It includes instant response and custom greetings, as well as access to the Grasshopper Voice Studio and professional voice talent for …