Note: While you could test your out-of-office message, you can also see it’s working because Gmail conveniently overlays a yellow bar at the top of your inbox reminding you that your autoresponder is on, along with options to “End now” or adjust your settings.
I’d add a little more detail to your message just to make it clear what will happen in your inbox. “If I don’t hear otherwise, I’ll assume that your issue was handled by my colleague” or “Please cc me if you contact Jane, and I’ll check back in on my return if I think your issue is still open.”
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I mean, this is what I pretty much did upon returning from my maternity leaves but I would never put it into an email! My maternity leave OOO was the vague “I am on extended leave and am not anticipated to return until X. Please contact Joe or Fergus in my absence.” X being a vague time-frame based on my due date and the length of my leave. No one is waiting 3+ months for an answer so I did get to delete most of the 500 emails I got during my most recent leave! I did once have someone internal tell me I should say maternity leave rather than leave, but really, what does it matter? I’m gone for a few months and no one outside of the company really NEEDS to know why.
Out-of-office messages are critical to keeping things moving smoothly during times when employees are absent. They also serve as reminders to others of what day you won’t be available.
Once I got an auto reply from a stakeholder on a project that said something to the effect of “Thanks for contacting me. Due to the large volume of email I receive, I don’t read them all. If I haven’t responded within 3 business days, please try again.”
See, in my head, “as soon as possible” reads simply as a more formal way of saying “I will respond at my earliest convenience.” Like, either way, this person is getting back to you as soon as they can, whatever that actually means.
Just because you are away, you still have the chance to keep the business going. Let your email work for you, by offering different things that will ultimately increase the chance to attract new customers. Your marketing team will be so grateful!
Which is why the workers who do have the ability, whether through place within the hierarchy or company culture, should not squander it. In fact, they should recognize the OOO as an opportunity to model and normalize organizational or even industry-wide guardrails (as opposed to bullshit feebly-maintained ‘boundaries’). It’s why, starting this summer, we need to embrace the blunt, descriptive OOO message.
No reddit on this rig, but “company-wide email + 30,000 employees + auto-responders =” as a search should get you there. Totally worth the hunt.
And that's it. Easy peasy, right? We know there are tons of genius out of office messages we missed, so if you've got a favorite don't forget to share it with us in the comments below!
I do this when I’m on personal vacations. When I’m doing field work for research, I do tend to add a statement that I won’t have access to email/phone because I’m doing field work in X location.
If you require assistance before then I can be reached on my cell phone at ( cell number).
Q. Are there sample voicemail and out-of-office email messages that we should use?
Oh you see, I do that on purpose. That way I can use the same OOO message internally and externally. Anyone within our company can find us in the global address book. Anyone outside our company who has done business with my department has my email address & my manager’s.
If your query is urgent you can contact my colleague, Rachael Farley, on [email protected] or call our office on 01325 778 786.
One year my organization mistakenly left me off the phone directory. I made no attempt to correct that. The only people who could call me we’re those who knew my number; everyone else had to use email.