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.
The best voicemail greeting I’ve ever encountered went like this: “If you’re hearing this message, please hang up and send me a text. I haven’t checked my voicemail since 2010.” And true to form, the mailbox was full and not accepting messages at that time. I appreciated her honesty!
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People often forget the power of an out of office message. One could even start their own language, as shown below:
Running away from your inbox or your work responsibilities doesn’t solve problems, it merely delays them. What boyd suggests, though, is something different. Her strategy asks us plan ahead of time: to construct an off ramp from our jobs as well as an on-ramp for the eventual re-entry. Her asks aren’t Herculean but they require some foresight — and they demand that a person be very upfront about what they want from their time off, and that they commit to protecting their time.
That 15minute breaktime message screams “past experience with a toxic company” to me.
1. Out of office annual leave/vacation templates. The most common example of an out of office message, this is often the last thing many do before going on holiday.
Image Source: https://onepoint21jigawatts.tumblr.com/post/61059236581/day-1-favorite-movie-field-of-dreams-1989
I think humor is fine (the hard-to-misunderstand kind), but definitely less than 100 words of it. “I’m out of the office returning Thursday June 10th. Please contact (shared mailbox email address) for support or call (person name) if the matter is urgent.”
My phone just sits there gathering dust, so the only OOO message I need is the one I put in my email. Something like “I’ll read my email again on X. If you need assistance before then, please contact my colleague NN.”
I’m on vacation until July 18th. If you need to reach me, here’s what you’ll need to do: First, travel to my homeland of Florida. Climb to the highest peak of the tallest mountain. Find a rare flower (no specifics, of course... It’d be cheating). Put the flower back, because as the old hiking rule goes, “Leave everything as you found it.”
And although my colleague had mixed feelings about her own parents joining that population in Florida, she couldn't be too upset when her dad suggested flying down from Boston for a Red Sox spring training game.
But your out-of-office message is as much for you as it is for the people receiving it, especially during the pandemic. “Boundaries have taken a big hit right now,” Ritter says. There’s a lot of pressure associated with missing something at work, and that stress has been heightened without the typical separation between office and home and with the added fear caused by an uncertain economy. An OOO message is a chance to set expectations, “to give yourself some breathing room and to ensure other people aren’t thinking negatively about you,” Ritter says, and it’s crucial for your mental health.
Every time the grocery store clerk asks, “Would you like to donate to breast cancer?” I have to bite my tongue.
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.
It's August, so it's the time of the year when many workers' holidays come around and the time of year when setting up an out of office automatic reply is vital to ensuring you can enjoy your summer break in peace.
6.) Bienvenido/a a John Doe. Nuestras líneas de teléfono no están operativas durante los períodos de vacaciones. El horario de oficina se puede encontrar en nuestra página web www.johndoe.de. Le damos las gracias por su confianza y le deseamos a usted y a su familia unas felices fiestas y un próspero año nuevo.
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: