If your message requires a response faster than that, please email my manager at [email protected].
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.
.
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.
Thank you for your email. I’m out of the office for the holidays and will be back on [date]. During this period I will have limited access to my email. If you need to contact me, I can be reached on [number, another email, mailing address], otherwise, I will respond to your email on my return.
If you’re taking a few days off and want to respond only to urgent emails, this template would be a great fit.
To create a new OOO template from scratch, go to Settings → Smart Tools → Templates, click + Add Template, and select Out-of-Office from the menu.
Usually, you have the option ready, and all you have to do is go to your email settings. Once you are there, you will see something like Automatic Replies, or even Out of office AutoReply, as it is with Gmail:
When crafting an out-of-office reply, keep in mind that you must provide sufficient detail so that recipients understand exactly when you’ll not be able to respond.
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.
Website: https://www.weavehelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360060999791-Listening-to-Voicemail-Messages
A retired small town newspaper guy once told me about the first time the publisher went on vacation and left him in charge (this would have been in the 80s). The publisher told him “Don’t call me unless the building burns down, and even then, don’t call me until the fire is out.” Good example of management setting vacation expectations.
Out of office messages can be as concise or detailed as you need but should follow a standard structure. Here are two templates you can use to create your own message.
It's a tip that Kate Leaver, Australian author of the newly published book The Friendship Cure: A Manifesto for Reconnecting in the Modern World, has long championed. “I usually just describe the most delicious thing I'll be eating while I'm away. I've been told it makes people very jealous, in a happy-for-me sort of way,” she says. A typical auto-response from her reads: “OOO: Busy eating my body weight in gelato. Gleefully, wifi isn’t great on windswept Italian beaches so I will likely not see your email for days.”
(If you have certain projects you cover list project name and the person covering you).
If the thought of me sight-seeing in Lisbon is making you feel a little blue here is a cat GIF to cheer you up.
Over time, I began to suspect that those who might be telling the truth (of which I suspected there were very few), would mention their relationship to the person and possibly the cause, for example “My grandmother just passed away after surgery.” The ones who left it wide open (“someone close has recently died”) led me to imagine that it could be a random person in their city that they read about in the news, their goldfish, or perhaps a distant relative who had passed away in the previous few years.
Happy holidays! I am currently out of the office, with no email access. I’ll be returning on (insert date) and will get back to you as soon as I can.