First, take your pick: you can create a mellow, professional out of office email (your CEO will approve!) or, you can make an auto-reply that's a bit goofier.
Vacation Tracker helped me book some days off, so you will not be able to reach me until *date*! I will be busy surfing the waves in Portugal/ climbing Kilimanjaro/ taking pictures on the Great Wall of China/ exploring wildlife in Tanzania.
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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.
Our office will remain closed for Christmas. We assure you that all your emails will be answered as soon as we return to the office. Merry Christmas!
Happy Holidays, I hope this email finds you well. I am taking advantage of the holiday season to get some much-needed time with family and friends. I will not be able to respond to any work-related emails until after Jan. 4, 2020. If you have a time …
What we need in our work communication is not more professional politeness or less formal, chat-based messaging applications like Slack. We need honesty. The problem is that we’ve conditioned ourselves to see honesty as self-indulgent or disrespectful. I’d argue the opposite is true. Honesty, even if it’s a bit more inconvenient for all parties in the moment, pays dividends later. It builds trust. When my partner Anne Helen Petersen and I were interviewing people for our forthcoming book on remote work, a frequent lament from both middle managers and workers was that they didn’t feel like they knew how to succeed in their jobs; that they were guessing what their superiors and coworkers wanted and, even when they asked, they didn’t quite trust the responses they got back.
Oops, too late! I’m off on holiday right now until the 16th, probably sipping on a margarita while you read this. I’ll reply when I’m back, but if it’s super urgent, contact [email protected]. It wouldn’t be right for this message to go to your boss or a client. If you’re not sure who is going to receive your message, we suggest following a more formal template.
One year my organization mistakenly left me off the phone directory. I made no attempt to correct that. The only people who could call me we’re those who knew my number; everyone else had to use email.
I personally like it. Of course, the emails that I’ve seen still say what to do if the matter is urgent and needs to be handled now — but as a person who gets 100+ emails a day, whether I tell you I’m deleting all of them when I get back or not — if it is in the thousands of emails that might accumulate in the time I am off, I’m not going to see it or respond. Better that I tell you now that you are going to have to resend the email after I return (or get my backup to handle it now) than you sit around waiting for a response that is never going to come. It is actually pretty common in my industry for any absence two weeks or more.
Is your email urgent? If so, you should probably call [Name] at [phone number], and they will assist you. They aren’t in the sunshine – they’re still at work.
We do this. It’s horrible. Especially if someone is termed. They should forward the mail to someone. Nope, it just goes *poof*
I can just about see having two OOOs: one for the actual leave time, and one for the first day you are back in the office, so people are aware you are digging yourself out of the emails and to please call or IM if it is time-sensitive.
I say “thanks for your message” because it feels to brusque without a greeting – but I can see it either way.
Written by Braden Becker @BradenBecker
Also, you need to know your audience if you are going to go eccentric. Alison mentions that this message is fine in their culture, but it wouldn’t npbe appropriate for my somewhat formal field. And even if your workplace in general is casual, you might be contacted by someone outside. (In a tiny provincial courthouse I served in the past, there is a story going around that in the 80s a junior but elderly clerk used to address phone callers as hun and sweetheart and generally speak very informally. Most people thought it was funny, and then the President of Supreme Court called and… he didn’t).
Website: https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/professional-voicemail-greeting
I’ll also admit to not changing my voicemail for OoO in the past 3 or 4 years. I rarely get calls anymore it’s just not worth it… I figure if they don’t reach me by phone they’ve already emailed me or will email me after the voicemail.