While the sender waits for your response to their email, take the sting out of your absence by involving them in a holiday survey, like the one below.
Thanks for your email. I’m currently attending [insert event, conference etc here], and will return on [date of return].
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If one were concerned about the message rubbing people the wrong way, it’s certainly something that can work with a bit of rephrasing: “I’m out on leave from X to Y. All messages received during that time will be deleted. Please resend your request after Y, or else contact Z for urgent assistance.”
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.
If people know you are on vacation or maternity leave, for instance, they are more likely to wait for your return to follow up. If you are at a work conference, however, they might still expect you to check your email or provide updates.
When the office remains closed for any holiday, the messages informing the employees about the holidays and wishing them on the holidays are sent through cards or text messages to the staff. One can also send the wishes through mails to all the office staff.
Both of these tools are designed to help you go from Email Explorer to Email Extractor – and get you from guessing to going when it comes to dealing with your email inbox.
Now that you know what you should and shouldn’t include, how do you go about crafting the perfect out-of-office vacation message?
So what makes a good automated response that will give you the reassurance you need to keep your work email under control so that you can truly enjoy your holiday?
Set your out of office messages and determine who monitors division and department messages.
But really, I think people who know you WFH will get your meaning and people who don’t know you WFH won’t care or feel misled if they find out you really work from home.
Thank you for your email. Please note that I will be out of the office on 5 February 2021. During this period I will have no access to my email. In case of something urgent, you can reach me on my mobile.
Two to three sentences is usually enough to tell recipients everything they need to know.
Oh heavens no. All I ask of an out of office is that it tells me when the person will be back (if known) and who I can contact in the interim.
A well-deserved holiday deserves a substantial out-of-office message that really hammers home the fact that they’re still working, while you’re off on your travels – nice and descriptive to really paint the picture!
5.) Dear customers, our office will be closed from December 24 through January 2. You can reach us as usual on Monday 5 January. We wish you and your family a merry christmas and a happy and successful new year..
Education Details: The Out of Office feature is only available for users with a Microsoft Exchange account; however, Home users with non-Exchange accounts can create an out-of-the-office template and create a rule to have Outlook send the reply automatically.