5.) Sehr geehrte Kunden, unser Büro ist vom 24 Dezember bis zum 2.Januar nicht besetzt. Sie erreichen uns wie gewohnt ab Montag den 5. Januar. Wir wünschen Ihnen und Ihrer Familie ein frohes Weihnachtsfest und ein gutes und erfolgreiches neue Jahr.
This is a general notice informing you of the absence of [NAME] until [MM/DD]. [NAME] has chosen to exercise his right to partake in the traditions of a certain holiday which may or may not be a denominational or non-denominational.
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I run a summer camp and i can’t convince IT to forward the phone off season (and I forget to check those voicemails when they aren’t flashing in front of me), so the voicemail there says “You’ve reached camp, we are closed for the season, and voicemails on this machine are not checked. you can contact me at our head office at X or email me at [email protected], repeat info, thanks!
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.
Research shows that vacations are beneficial to our physical and mental health, work performance, and productivity. To replicate this research, I’m conducting a participant observation study until DATE, and will be out of the office. In the interim, if you have an urgent request, please reach out to EMPLOYEE. Otherwise, I’ll be in touch upon my return.
I’ll reply to your message promptly when I return. But, if you require immediate assistance, please send an email to [contact name] at [contact email] in my absence.
(Depending on your email host, the process of setting up your out of office assistant may vary. You can find a guide on how to access your out of office settings in Outlook here.)
For many roles, of course, the sort of OoO described wouldn’t work. But there are a lot of roles where people would survive just fine letting their requests sit for an extra week before forwarding again. And especially at smaller companies where there they might be pressed for coverage when people are out, I think it’s great to normalise that a job is basically ‘off-line’ for a week or two so that the employee can rest and recharge.
The plan B is to send it again when they’re back though. I think there are a lot of situations where I emailed them and someone else from the start and someone else answered, or I found someone else in the 2 months span until they’re back, or did it myself, or it’s too late to help…. So it does help them avoid following up on things that don’t need following up on.
When it comes to the final days before vacation, people tend to fall into one of two camps: 1) those who watch the clock incessantly, and 2) those who are so busy before they leave, they might even forget to put up an out-of-office (OOO) email message.
1) Communicate when a person will be back, or if they are out for an indeterminate period of time, tell me who I should be contacting instead 2) Communicate what I should expect. (For example, when I do my monthly reports, I have an out of office message that says that I’ll be slow to respond. I *will* actually check my email at least a couple of times, but I generally won’t respond to anything non-urgent.) 3) If the person is in a job that handles urgent requests, list who I need to contact instead if it can’t wait until they get back.
When was today? Did you leave the sign up or is it freshly posted? Etc. People, use dates!
7.) Herzlich willkommen bei der Rechtsanwaltskanzlei Mustermann. Leider können wir Ihren Anruf derzeit nicht persönlich entgegen nehmen, da Sie während unserer Betriebsferien anrufen. Gerne können Sie uns eine E-Mail senden an [email protected] - Wir werden uns dann nach unserer Rückkehr umgehend bei Ihnen melden. In dringenden Fällen wenden Sie sich bitte an unsere Kanzleivertretung. Diese finden Sie auf unserer Homepage unter www.kanzlei-mustermann.de . Vielen Dank für Ihren Anruf. Auf Wiederhören!
Don’t stress about what to say in your out-of-office messages. Keep it simple, concise, and the people reaching out to you will know exactly what to do or when they’ll hear from you. And, most importantly, enjoy your time off! By Erin Ollila / May 16th, 2021 / Categories: Professional Development / Tags: holidays, out-of-office, time off, vacation, work, work from home, work life balance
5. It’s not all about Christmas, Cyber Monday, or Black Friday. When referring to the holidays, you might be thinking about Thanksgiving, Christmas, or maybe Hanukkah.
If this matter isn’t time-sensitive, rest assured that I’ll respond when I’m back in the office. But, if this is an urgent request, please resend any messages that require my immediate attention with a subject line of “URGENT: [Original Subject]”.
This person works remotely and wants to continue to do so, but I think I am going to have to have a conversation about them using the technologies at our disposal that make this possible. Including out of office and second take-home monitor.