Being a responsible netizen or professional in the Internet age also means leaving useful clues and messages for your email correspondents whenever you will be out of reach temporarily or permanently. Remember that your email correspondents expect you to respond within minutes or, at most, 24 hours of receiving their emails unless specifically stated in the email that you are free to respond much later.
Let’s be honest, you worked so hard and now it’s time to have the well-deserved vacation. There is nothing bad in wanting to show off where you are going or what you are doing.
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But you don’t need to write an instruction guide for people as though they’re incapable of solving their own problems without you.
That is kind of glorious. And it does make sense when the person you’re emailing is gone for months. I did something similar my last mat leave except I didn’t explicitly state it, and lo and behold, people figured out that I wasn’t going to catch their email from a month or so earlier unless they brought it up again.
I’m currently working a part-time schedule: Mondays and Wednesdays from 9 AM to 5 PM and Fridays from 9 AM to 1 PM. If you’re receiving this message, it means you’ve reached me when I’m offline. If you need to speak with someone immediately, Siobhan, our HR associate, can point you in the right direction. She can be reached at [email protected].
That’s exactly how I set up mine, except that ordinarily I’d have several options, like: “If you need help with X, call A. For help with Y, call B. For help with Z, call C. For anything else, call my manager at extension 000.
Hello, Happy holidays! Thank you for your email; we are currently closed for the Easter holidays. It won’t be possible to respond to our email as I have limited access to the internet. But once I am back I will respond as quickly as usual. Kind Regards,
As promised, we’re back with more information about Vtiger Social! Previously, we introduced[1] you to the Social module and discussed its Facebook aspect[2]. In this post, ...
Q. Are there any departments or clinics on the Health Science Campus that will be closed during winter break?
Finally, if you’re doing something incredible for the holiday break, you may as well let people know about it. Heading skiing for a few weeks, or going on a cruise? Put it in your out of office! It’s not like your emailers can do anything about it.
212-555-1212The following greeting accomplishes this succinctly. Thank you for calling [LinkedPhone – The Work From Anywhere Business Phone System]. Our office is closed until [Monday, January 25th for the holiday weekend]. If your call is urgent, please contact [Anya at 212-555-1212 or [email protected] ].
Leaving an email without a responder can appear unprofessional, lose potential business and, worst of all, make you look like Scrooge!
Out of office messages can also make your workload easier when you return to the office. Colleagues and clients who know you are on vacation or at a conference might be less likely to fill your inbox with messages. If someone does need immediate help on a project, they can know who to contact in your absence to make sure it gets handled on time.
I might sound nitpicky but the language is important. “Might” or “may be” or “slower than usual” are vague and don’t offer the sender all that much information about when you’re really going to respond to them. Worse, they do a horrible job of protecting the time of the email receiver who, as the responder notes, is not in the office! Such a responder implies that, not only will the vacationer reply to the email, but they may not even miss a beat. They may be slow to respond, but they also might not.
My favorite OOO to set is something like this: “I’m at sea from X to Y with very limited bandwidth. I’ll reply to urgent emails as soon as possible (but there may be a delay); if you don’t hear back from me by Z, please resend you message.”
I have a coworker that purposely leaves them on the first day that she’s back in the office (even though it said she would be back today) because she thinks it signals that she’s still unavailable (while she needs some time to catch up.) I think it’s a bit confusing. I personally would feel weird doing it because it seems like I just never came back from vacation.
The best holiday messages are short, cheerful and specific. Try to include the person’s name, as well as a memory from the holiday season or year.