Thank you for your email. I’m currently out of the office until [date] to celebrate the holiday with my loved ones—without my phone in front of my face.
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These messages are generally formal in nature and have the information about the unavailability of an individual and also the details of the person who can be contacted in his/her absence.
Smugness: it’s almost impossible to dodge in an OOO. London-based poet Rishi Dastidar, whose debut collection Ticker-Tape is billed as a “maximalist take on 21st Century living”, embraces this and lets his inner show-off have free rein by penning poems for his OOOs. “Yes, the tone of these poems is a little self-satisfied – but if you have to tell colleagues you are away, why not try and do it with a little style and pizzaz?” he points out, adding that it’s also one of the few mediums where you’re guaranteed an audience. Here’s how he explained he was away in France:
Thank you again for being the best team one could ask for. Your energy and persistence has driven our company to new heights, and we greatly appreciate it.
I was recently on the receiving end of a very perplexing out of office message. It simply said, “I am currently out of the office.” No indication of when they would be back or who to contact in the meantime. Fortunately in my case this was someone I cc’ed on an email as an FYI and did not need any response from, but still–who does that? IMO a good out of office message says how long you’re out and who to contact in the interim if things can’t wait, no more and no less.
The Financial Times and its journalism are subject to a self-regulation regime under the FT Editorial Code of Practice.
The appropriate tone depends on the holiday. If you’re closing for Christmas or New Year’s, it’s safe to assume your customers expect you to be festive and maybe even humorous. Conversely, if you’re closed for Veterans’ day, your email should strike a more serious chord. Use our templates and double-check your tone before you hit send.
If I got an OoO just to tell me to have a good day, I would find that person and throw water on their computer. They’re obviously not qualified to operate one.
Next, click Send automatic replies.Tick the “Only send during this time range” box. Set the dates you’ll be out of the office. You can skip this step if you want to manually turn off automatic replies when you get back to the office.Then set your automatic out of office reply under the Inside My Organization tab. This will be the automatic response sent to people from your company who email you while you’re away.
You should use your out of office email whenever you’re going to be away from the office – whether it’s for a day, a week, or even longer.
Also, a lot of you have asked where you can find Aviation Gin, so I had the whizzes in our website department whip up this locator aviationgin.com/locator
If I’m out for three months, *someone* is doing each bit of my job in that time. Me coming back and wading through three months of emails where the majority of them will involve someone seeing the OOO and promptly emailing my cover instead, and trying to track down which ones did that and cc-ed me, which ones did that and *didn’t* cc me, and which ones fell off is just a terrible use of getting-back-up-to-speed time.
Once the person reaching out to you realizes you’re gone, they may panic if they have a legitimate need for immediate support. The best way to avoid this is to let your callers (and emailers) know how to find the appropriate help.
Former coworker: “I am out of the country from X until Y. Please do not email me during this time as last time I came back to about 250, and reading them all takes up a lot of the time I have left before I retire.” Some people thought that was funny. The director who received that in response to an all staff communication? Not so much. Coworker got a talking to by his manager when he got back to the UK.
Not every vacation you take is going to leave you completely unreachable. For those days when you’re out of the office but are still checking and responding to email or phone calls, make sure your message explicitly states that people will still be able to reach you, and how:
Stav is a senior editor and writer at The Muse, where she covers careers and work with a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace. Before joining The Muse, Stav was a staff writer at Newsweek, and her work has also appeared in publications including The Atlantic, The Forward, and Newsday. Stav earned a B.A. in history with a minor in dance at Stanford University and holds an M.S. from Columbia Journalism School. She won the Newswomen's Club of New York's Martha Coman Front Page Award for Best New Journalist in 2016. She prefers sunshine and tolerates winters grudgingly. You can find her on LinkedIn and Twitter and can visit her website here.