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.
Because you can never predict when an emergency will come up, make sure you have someone who can resond to urgent requests. And that person would be your direct manager. But let them know ahead of time so they're not blindsided when they need to respond to something.
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I work with such a person. So instead of something like “I’m writing to ask if you would graciously consider serving on our committee”, she will send a message along the lines of: “I am graciously writing to ask you to serve on our committee.”
Hi, I’m out of the office. Thank you for getting in touch. We’ll get back to you within 8 business hours.
But it seems a bit too chock full of dismissive, thinky veiled put-downs really. I wouldn’t want to work for someone would lump the people who work for them as competent humans (oh-em-gee, thanks), is that the best they can do to describe people? Oh wait….they look out for her (is she a princess) and each other (should I start applauding now?). No one needs to call me or anyone else a rock star, best teapot decorator in the multiverse, or amazing humans all the time but the best she could crank out was competent + humans. I get the attempt to be witty but it’s really sad that she isn’t more generous.
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If you do not resend your email to the appropriate person as outlined above, it will not be read. I am not checking email during this time, and my emails are not being forwarded to someone else to check, either. Please also understand that it will take me some time to respond to you once I am back.
Thank you for you email. I am out of the office from [insert date] until [insert date]. If you have an urgent request, please contact [insert name] at [insert email].
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I have always been flabbergasted by people who include vacation details (especially if they’ll be out of the country) in their OOO messages. I’m not a burglar, nor do I know any. (I hope!) But the people with the message don’t know that!
If you require immediate assistance in my absence, please contact John on 0912345678 or [email protected]. He will be available to deal with your inquiry.
You are hereby informed that a large number of our company workers are going to take their days off due to extreme weather conditions prevailing in the city. Due to this, there would be much difficulty in coming and going so it is a mutual decision from the heads of our office to make it closed from 25-12-20XX to 02-01-20XX. This temporary closure will result in delayed answers to your queries, so these will be answered right after the opening of our office. All the delays are regretted.
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 …
The plan B is to send it again when they’re back though. I think there are a lot of situations where I emailed them and someone else from the start and someone else answered, or I found someone else in the 2 months span until they’re back, or did it myself, or it’s too late to help…. So it does help them avoid following up on things that don’t need following up on.
Hi, I am currently out of the office from [MM/DD] to [MM/DD]. I will do my best to respond promptly to your email when I return. Please contact [name] at [email] or [phone] for any urgent matters.
A standard OOO responder email simply needs to inform the sender that you are out of the office and when to expect a response. Like this: Hi there, Thank you for your email. I am currently out of the office until [date] and will have limited access to my email. If you require immediate assistance for any urgent matters, please contact [name] at [email] or [phone] in my absence. Best,
For comparison my current (not great) boss sent an out of office recently detailing how he would be out because he was on his personal sail boat all day, sailing from vacation destination X back to our port city. At length. In a pandemic. When we all had our wages frozen at the start of the crisis.