I didn’t actually put that in my maternity leave out-of-office, but it is what I did when I got back.
In my much, MUCH younger days, I printed out a photo of a cruise ship with an arrow and “I am here” pasted on it and taped it to my monitor…
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“We will get in touch with you very soon”.“Thank you for reaching out to us”.“Our representative we contact you ASAP”.
The big issue I have with the example in the post is that not only is it unnecessarily long-winded, but you have to listen through all the chattiness to get to the “here’s who to contact in a real emergency” part. The tone does rub me wrong, but I’m willing to roll with that as a personality/company culture thing.
Website: https://www.roberthalf.com/blog/salaries-and-skills/vacation-time-how-to-craft-an-effective-out-of-office-message
After all, your goal is always to keep your business associates happy. For that reason, you should have a backup co-worker who will cover some of your work while you are not available. Not only is this the professional way to go, but it will also leave your customer satisfied with the company’s service.
Live support will be unavailable during our closure. Emergency support requests should be submitted via our contact form or via Basecamp if your project is currently active. We wish all of our clients a very happy and safe 4th of July holiday. We look forward to working with you when we get back from a well deserved long weekend. See you next week!
My OOO messages are always pretty casual, and the last line in the list of “for X, contact Y” is always something like “for chili recipes, contact Z”.
Half of the auto-replies I get are for very specific chunks of time. Like, if you are out of the office for three hours I don’t need to know, dude.
Kate Sullivan is a work and wellbeing psychologist and doctoral researcher who holds an M.S. in applied psychology from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and specializes in non-traditional careers and helping people craft their best, most satisfying work lives. She regularly writes about work-life balance and modern careers at constellationcareers.com and for leading business publications.
I was once horrified as an HR person, and amused as a normal person, by an OOO from an employee who had left the company. They had booked vacation for their last week or so, and while I can’t remember the exact text, it said that they were no longer with the company and they were happy to leave and never come back. I think “to this hellhole” was only implied.
If they have to leave an OOO message for being out for an hour for a meeting, clearly it is A Big Deal in that office :(
Don’t leave messages that come in outside of business hours hanging. Instead, let them know when they can expect a response. You’ve reached Maggie at HealthCorps. Our business hours are 8-5 EST and I am currently OOO. I will get back to you within the next business day, thanks!
To sweeten your wait, I am sending you this great article (hyperlink to your blog) that includes five books you should not miss this summer.
I’m four weeks away from going on maternity leave for six months, so I’m in the process of divvying up my clients between colleagues, or finishing off work and closing cases. I will need an OOO for anyone who pops up again having been closed in the past, so this thread has been useful to get me thinking about it!
I ran a nonprofit organization staffed entirely be volunteers (I was one). After one too many people incensed that we did not follow up to their emails within two hours, we had to include an OOO message that said we were a volunteer organization, and any request may take up to two weeks to process. Please email again if you have not heard from us by then.
Yep, tech worker here and I didn’t even bat an eye at this when I saw it on TikTok.