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.
My snarky colleague sure did in his out-of-office message below. We send thank-you letters in response to holiday gifts, so it’s only natural to expect the same gesture in our work inboxes …
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HI. I need help. Auto reply works at me only for text messages. If anyone calls me auto reply doesnt work. Any suggestions? Thanks. Joco
In this image, you're letting people know you're OOO with a "Missing" notice on a milk carton. Genius. Just be careful — this sort of autoresponder is best for internal emails, not for autoresponders that get sent to prospects and clients.
Yeah, it’s very strange. I understood changing voicemails to explain that the line can’t actually be answered, but someone is checking the messages and will respond (though that was also only an issue for the first few months), but they had no reason to even mention it for email. I started my job 3 months into lockdown, and by that point, procedures were in place to pretty much allow us to operate normally, albeit with a lot more done electronically than before.
Was required to do this at my last job and our script was to say “I’m working from home today. If you need to reach me urgently, call me at (personal/home/cell number).”
Because I used to get phone calls that defaulted to, “I need the director”, I had my out of office mail set to:
Yeah, announcing you were going to delete emails unread and expecting the sender to resend when you return would NEVER fly in my office. I’d get executive complaints about that, especially if it went to a client or outside party – if a client can’t reach you, they will reach out to someone else who may not work at your organization and you lose business. I feel like this delete-it-all philosophy would only work for an entirely internal role where timelines are more relaxed, and even then, I feel it’s a bit unprofessional to foist your own catch-up work onto others, especially if they’ve been backfilling for you while you were OOO.
In my much, MUCH younger days, I printed out a photo of a cruise ship with an arrow and “I am here” pasted on it and taped it to my monitor…
I used to have this on my personal voice mail, back when voice mail was used often since internet was over phone lines. I stopped using it because it confused too many callers. Invariably the first message would be “Hello? Hello? Mark? Fu-” (click). Then there’d be another call with a proper message.
I should add that I actually WISH I got more exciting OOO messages and/or that I felt like I could be more exciting with mine!
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.
Education Details: Here's the perfect out-of-office message for when you're only taking one day off and really want to unplug—whether on your own or because of a major holiday. The Out-of-Office Template You Need When You’re Only Taking One Day Off. by. he also writes test prep and higher education marketing content for The Economist.
This is so funny to be because I would chuckle getting those! You have personal context which is how you know that there is an aggeressive/accusatory tone….but without that context I would interpret these as boundaried and light-hearted. (With the exception of the ‘momtears’ one, that would feel overly personal to me.)
Interesting! I’d be unpleasantly surprised and tempted to scold them for not taking a proper break.
To help you fully unplug from email, we’ve compiled six of the best out-of-office message examples that are perfectly suited to you, your company, and this vacation-heavy time of year.
From 20th till 31st of July I will be out of the office with limited access to my email.