Website: https://www.slideshare.net/kirsty_wilson/7-ways-to-annonce-your-holiday-office-closure
I don’t. They just have to wait. The people in my office that could have a legitimate emergency that requires my input have my cell number, and they’d just call me.
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I say I am “away from my desk”, or “unavailable”. To indicate I am working, “I will be at my desk from xhour to yhour on xday”.
As a “don’t try this at home” anecdote, last week we had an all staff retreat, and we were asked to put up away messages. I put a perfectly professional one up for outside email, but in a fit of whimsy, the internal mail triggered an away message that said “Why are you emailing? We are supposed to be paying attention to the retreat!” I figured, we were all at the retreat, so nobody would ever know. Of course, someone did email me 30 minutes before everything started, and triggered the message. Fortunately, he figured out it was an away message and thought it was funny.
how-do-you-put-an-out-of-office-message-on-a-public-holiday-118462085 / 5 based on 2 votes.
I had a friend in high school whose voicemail was him singing that song. However, I didn’t have cable at the time (living in a rural area in the early 2000s) and didn’t get the reference. I thought he was soooo clever!
Note: The following steps are for users with a Microsoft Exchange account. If you don’t see the words, “Connected to: Microsoft Exchange” at the bottom of your Outlook window, check out our article on how to set up out of office in Outlook with an IMAP/POP3 account.
I only set my out of office if I’m going to be gone for more than one full day. Like, right now I don’t bother if I’m going to be out for one day, because in general the people who email me either know I’m out for a day or are unfazed by waiting 24 hours for a response. The last time I went out of office for a week, I came back to about 65 emails, 9 of which would have actually required my attention when I weeded through them. If I got a higher email volume, I’d do for a single day though.
The UPS driver is scheduled to pick me back up on the eighth. He should deliver me back to the office by the ninth (assuming he’s not late like he was this time).
With all that in mind, read on for a few examples of what you might actually write...
Go a long way to set up an out of office message in a plain and funny way. Use a little humor to build the rappo with the clients and develop the relationship between the customers and employees and direct the eyes of the clients.
I’m mostly back in my actual office now, but I went with “away from my computer between X and Z” a couple of times and just straight up “I am on annual leave between X and Z” a couple of times.
“There is nothing so terrible as activity without insight.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe I realize it can be tough to justify putting in the time ...
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Or, worse, when someone has left the organization and the organization hasn’t bothered to put up an OOO, so I’m just emailing a blackhole until I call or someone finally checks that inbox. I never fail to set up my OoO reply, and yet most of my external contacts don’t get them. Let’s say I work for LlamaCombs, with an name(@)llamacombs.com address, and this is a company who has two clients AlpacaBrush and VicunaShampoo. I work primarily with the second, and their internal directory lists my contact info as name(@)vicunashampoo.com. It works because any e-mail sent to the second address is auto-forwarded to the first. Except it messes up OoO replies big time. Because the auto-reply is sent to my own alternate address, not to the original sender, and I have no way to change that.
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.
I am on annual leave until [DD/MM/YY]. I will allow each sender one email and if you send me multiple emails, I will randomly delete your emails until there is only one remaining. Choose wisely.