But some of us just aren’t as lucky. Or if we’re traveling during the winter and heading up north — well, we’re going to run into some snow, aren’t we?
Just hang in there, the holiday break is near. Alas! You can finally disconnect, recharge, and relax.
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My boss requires us to put a nightly OOO message up, and I HATE it. I pushed back on it for months at first, because people know and understand that the reason no one is responding at 8pm is because the business is closed (or at least, they should understand that…). It wasn’t worth the fight, my boss thinks it’s so important, so I caved and just turn on the message every night. I think it makes us look immature and like we don’t understand business norms, but it’s not the hill I’m willing to die on.
It’s important to get the tone and content right because it can make or break your reputation as a company.
Like the previous examples, the message doesn’t have to be lengthy – you just need to let people know the details, and who they should be contacting in your absence.
While I am out of the office, here’s our awesome e-book on “How To Choose The Right CRM For Your Business”. It’s free; enjoy it!
When you are not in the office for more than a day, telling people who contact you that you might not be checking or responding to your emails right away will help them complete work in your absence. Setting up an out of office message can help you communicate this information. This article will describe how to write an out of office message and provide examples of effective message formats.
Apparently, people receiving such a notification rarely get angry. "The response is basically 99% positive, because everybody says, 'That's a real nice thing, I would love to have that too,'" Daimler spokesman Oliver Wihofszki told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. Holiday envy has been replaced by corporate email policy envy.
So, because I want you to be able to enjoy your time off, I’ve put together these two email templates to help you make it abundantly clear that you’re not around for the next 24 hours.
No matter what your message says, just make sure you have one – it’s the polite and professional thing to so. To help you get started, we’ve put together some examples you can test, tweak, use, and share with colleagues.
(Obviously, it wouldn’t fly in all cultures, but I do think this should be more normalised.)
I’m tempted to make out a “SUPER DUPER HELPFUL COWORKER” certificate to hand to them.
[Tweet: “Are you going on holiday? Learn the best tips for writing your next out-of-office auto-reply email in English.”]
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“The world is serious enough as it is - people need, and usually appreciate, an unexpected moment of levity in their day,” he says, when quizzed about how recipients might respond to such an OOO. He also confides that he himself has dispensed with auto responses altogether – though not for idealistic reasons. “The last time I tried to set one up, I botched it so badly that somehow it resent every single email in my outbox from the previous year - client emails, firing notices, literally thousands of emails.”
Going back to how some people can’t ever switch off, this person went above and beyond for their auto-email with a humorous graph that very accurately shows the highs and lows of stress levels before, during and after time away.
Mine said this when I was in the hospital and I didn’t know if I’d be back in two weeks or six.