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Have you sent a proper farewell email to the whole office, thanking everyone and wishing them well?
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I used to know someone who had a snarky message about how “if this is an emergency, there are no actual emergencies in my field,” and then encouraged someone to Google for “goats in trees” and calm down. Yes, she was allowed do that in her office.
Changing it every evening is definitely too much, though. I would assume the vast majority of people sending business email understand the concept of working and non-working hours…
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Before we further discuss some of the examples of a good out of office message, decide for yourself what you want to get from it and what tone are you going to use.
Literally just “Please note that (date) is a public holiday in (country). I will not be checking my inbox until (next working day).”
Same. I also have a version that is customer facing/external and one that is internal. My coworkers get a little more info.
But the bottom line is, unplug as much as you possibly can. You’ll get more benefit from your time away and return relaxed, recharged and ready to take on the New Year with extra energy.
Several of my coworkers still have page-long “Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, our department will be…” auto-replies set up 24/7, even though the basic function of our office has barely changed. I’m currently working odd part time hours right now, and if there weren’t so many of these annoying emails going around, I’d have one that clarifies my email timelines, but I don’t want to be another spammer.
I worked with a guy years ago who would update his voicemail greeting literally every time he left the office. So the bare minimum would be that he’d record a new message when he arrived in the office in the morning. Then, when leaving for lunch he’d record a new greeting listing the time he would be back in the office, then he’d record a new message when he got back from lunch, then a new one at the end of the day saying he would be back in the morning. That’s not even counting the times he was out of the office on work business. It was deranged, especially since he had the type of job where he would normally be in and out of the office often.
I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m really tired of the ones that are basically “I’m in a meeting for an hour and I’ll check my messages when I return.”
As owner of Aviation Gin, my mission is to never speak to you like some out of touch Hollywood A-hole. My job is to remain accountable. Down to earth. Hard working.
In the Message and Language section, select the language and enter text, images, and hyperlinks into the Message field. For instructions on language and the use of snippets, click here. Pro Tip: Within the message body, we recommend that you don't use phrases such as: "We are currently out of the office" or "Our office hours are....." Instead, use generic phrases such as "We have received your message and will be in touch." This approach protects your SLA in marketplaces that use detectors to discourage automated responses, which look for these key phrases and may not approve the message as a valid response to reset the SLA.
I do that for most cases. Occasionally I’ll change it to “I’m out of the country and will not have phone or email access.”
A. Nearly all offices will be closed on Main Campus during winter break; therefore, each department should ensure their telephone messages and out-of-office email replies reflect that their office is closed but resuming normal business hours after New Year's Day. They may also want to note their winter break closure on their webpage.
Too little info is frankly worse, IMO. All you need for an OOO is date you are coming back, and who to contact in your absence if it can’t wait for your return. If it doesn’t have that, why bother having one at all?