[Tweet: “Are you going on holiday? Learn the best tips for writing your next out-of-office auto-reply email in English.”]
The boss’s thinking was that people who did drivebys looking for you would then email you, see your OOO, and then be able to call you to talk about whatever they were driving by for. No one liked putting their personal contact info so we never worked from home (pre-COVID and pre-VOIP implementation) or told people to IM us and we’d call them.
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That really does feel excessive. I think most people are savvy enough to think, ‘Huh, it’s late in the day for pretzelgirl, I might not get a response until tomorrow. Business as usual.’ Being out of communication for a day – travel, meetings, days off – doesn’t require an out of the office alert, either, just a response as soon as possible.
Once the person reaching out to you realizes you’re gone, they may panic if they have a legitimate need for immediate support. The best way to avoid this is to let your callers (and emailers) know how to find the appropriate help.
If you have a corporate email account at work, the chances are you'll also have some kind of setting that enables you to tell people when you're on holiday or out on the office on business. But what if you don't? Or just want to set up an email auto reply on your Mac at home?
I’ve had people inform me that my OOO is up during a period that I was still away. Yea I’m aware my systems are set to send an OOO message, it’s doing its job if you got it.
I cancelled it at the end of the trial period and they asked me why so they could improve their services. I surprised myself by bursting out, “messages, messages, messages! I cannot take it anymore!
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Website: https://www.roberthalf.com/blog/salaries-and-skills/vacation-time-how-to-craft-an-effective-out-of-office-message
I didn’t watch the video, but reading the transcript I got the vibe that the author is one of those people that thinks they are a lot more clever than everyone else does.
I’d probably say something like “I am unavailable until X date. Please contact [colleague] or [colleague] if you need assistance. Thanks!”
Sometimes teams need the extra nudge to disconnect...here are our tips for getting your team to unplug from email over the holidays.
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.)
Thank you for your message. I am currently out of the store on holidays, with no access to email. I will be returning on (insert date).
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Thanks for your email. I’m currently attending [insert event, conference etc here], and will return on [date of return].
But really, I think people who know you WFH will get your meaning and people who don’t know you WFH won’t care or feel misled if they find out you really work from home.