You are under no obligation to share the reason for your absence. Even if you’re on parental leave, “on leave” or “out of the office” is sufficient. Unfortunately, discrimination against pregnant people and parents happens, and if you don’t want to disclose that you’re on parental leave, you don’t have to.
Website: https://www.onsip.com/voip-resources/smb-tips/after-hours-voicemail-and-auto-attendant-greetings
.
Whether your schedule has changed because you’re temporarily down to part-time or because you’re trying to fit work in around taking care of your children, you can use your OOO message to communicate and set expectations. You might write:
That said, I promised my wife that I am going to try to disconnect, get away and enjoy our vacation as much as possible. So, I’m going to experiment with something new. I’m going to leave the decision in your hands:
You may also like:online dating rejections vs. job rejectionshow to write the perfect out-of-office messageshould I create a video of myself and send it along with my job application? Post navigation ← coworker loves to abuse robocallers, boss uses Facebook photos without permission, and more Ask a Manager in the media → { 728 comments… read them below } Ask a Manager* Post authorJune 3, 2021 at 11:01 am
The vice-chancellor of [X] University is extremely pleased to announce the winter vacations from the 25th of December to the 6th of January 20XX. All the offices of the University Campus enclosed for the said period. Have a safe holiday and enjoy the break.
I’m currently out of the office, enjoying some peanuts and Cracker Jacks with my family. Can you guess where I am? That’s okay, you’re busy.
Thanks for your email. I’m currently offline, returning on [date]. I’ll respond to your message then.
I get really annoyed at people that don’t have put up OOO messages and I am left wondering if they are out or just ignoring me. I collaborated with a woman who was out frequently but never put an OOO. She also got very prickly if she felt you were going around her. So anytime we didn’t get a response from her, we had to go through this guessing game of “do we wait, do we talk to someone else, how important is our request.” I was glad when she moved on.
What makes this a decent example of an OOO message is that it’s candid, (hopefully) honest, and blunt. There’s no guessing whether or not this dude is going to respond to your email this week. Also, it gives us a bit of an insight into his life right now, which helps communication in the moment and in the future. He’s burned out. Even if you did manage to reach him, it’s likely he’d be resentful, even if he didn’t say so. There’s a good chance the sender of the original email will identify with this and respect his time.
The first part of the process is to click on the Settings button in the top right-hand corner the Gmail dashboard, before clicking See All Settings.
Give yourself some slack when promising people to keep up with their messages. If your vacation ends on January 18, but you know that you won’t be able to check up on old emails for the next couple of days, mention that in your reply.
Going back to how some people can’t ever switch off, this person went above and beyond for their auto-email with a humorous graph that very accurately shows the highs and lows of stress levels before, during and after time away.
Need inspiration? Here are five out-of-office message examples from the career development site guaranteed to spread holiday cheer professionally:
I am currently out of the office on my holiday – I’m probably drunk somewhere in a bar in Spain. See you when I get back.
Thank you for your email. I’m out of the office and into the cookies and eggnog right now. I’m celebrating the holidays with my loved ones and will not be checking my email until [return date].
In case of emergency, you can contact me on my cell phone, where I will answer as soon as possible.