Eh, figuratively. It’s like saying I’ve gone to lunch even though I’m still right here eating at my desk–the point is that I’m unavailable to do any work.
Josh Kopelman’s vacation email is a classic example of taking a blunt approach at OOO messages.
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Seems like a big task, right? Well…wrong. You don’t need to stop by everyone in the office’s desks (if you’re even working in an office these days!) or send out an email to each and every client or lead. The easiest way to do this is by simply changing your voicemail greeting and adding an out-of-office email responder to your email client.
Now, make sure you take care of the additional settings for DND and turn off “Scheduled.” Make sure the phone can set on DND mode “Always,” otherwise you can expect some calls while the phone is not locked, which may ruin your vacation.
It’s also expected that if you’re in Wales you put the effort in to at least try and read Welsh, but tbh I can barely read English before 10am.
You have to manually turn on DND mode from Control Panel. The iPhone will start to send the auto-reply to incoming messages and calls.
Like the previous examples, the message doesn’t have to be lengthy – you just need to let people know the details, and who they should be contacting in your absence.
If you’ve written an out-of-office message before, you’ll surely know some of the basics. For the most part, they still apply during the pandemic, with a few additional considerations. Here’s a quick overview of what you should keep in mind as you compose your autoreply these days:
As owner of Aviation Gin, my mission is to never speak to you like some out of touch Hollywood A-hole. My job is to remain accountable. Down to earth. Hard working.
And… it’s playing in the background as I write this email. Guess what? I’m on vacation! And I do love my occupation.
12. "Hi, you've reached [company]. We're available by phone from [hour] to [hour] [time zone] Monday through Friday [optional: and from hour to hour on the weekends]. You can also contact us by going to our website, [URL], and live-chatting or emailing us. If you'd like us to call you back, please leave your name and number after the tone."
Thank you for your email. I’m currently offline until [date] to celebrate the holiday with my loved ones—without my phone in front of my face.
As long as you’ve covered the basics—dates of your absence and who to contact in your absence—you should be good to go.
Thanks for explaining, that makes sense. To me, it seemed like a well-communicated coverage plan and I would have especially appreciated the setting of expectations on how soon I could expect a response so never would have even considered that to be condescending.
It’s common practice to prepare an email vacation autoresponder for when you are going to be away from work for a lengthy period of time. But in many cases that isn’t enough to give you – and those who may be wanting to reach you – peace of mind while you are gone.
Hi, Happy holidays, and thanks for your email! I’m taking a few days off to spend time with my family and friends so I won’t be answering emails as quickly as usual.
What we need in our work communication is not more professional politeness or less formal, chat-based messaging applications like Slack. We need honesty. The problem is that we’ve conditioned ourselves to see honesty as self-indulgent or disrespectful. I’d argue the opposite is true. Honesty, even if it’s a bit more inconvenient for all parties in the moment, pays dividends later. It builds trust. When my partner Anne Helen Petersen and I were interviewing people for our forthcoming book on remote work, a frequent lament from both middle managers and workers was that they didn’t feel like they knew how to succeed in their jobs; that they were guessing what their superiors and coworkers wanted and, even when they asked, they didn’t quite trust the responses they got back.