I do this when I’m on personal vacations. When I’m doing field work for research, I do tend to add a statement that I won’t have access to email/phone because I’m doing field work in X location.
What Should Your Vacation Message Include?A subject, with the dates you leave and returnWho to contact in an emergency (name, email, and phone number)Point of contact for non-urgent inquiries (name, email, and phone number)Keep Your Message Professional
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Hi, You just missed me. I am out of the office until [MM/DD]. If your question can wait, great. I’ll reply when I get back. If not, contact [name] at [email] or [phone] and they’ll take good care of you. Meanwhile, feel free to peruse our FAQ section of [website] to see if your question can’t be answered there.
By which I mean to say: I’m on holiday, I’m definitely sunburnt, and I’m sorry I missed your email.
As a matter of courtesy – and to give you the peace of mind needed to be present wherever you are going (either away from the office or on vacation) – you should send each of your clients a simple email to let them know you’ll be away. Below I’ve offered some sample text for to you use as a template. Feel free to make it a TextExpander snippet, Gmail canned response, or whatever. Just use it (or something like it). Please.
The people who never change their holiday OOO message or only include half the information, if you’re lucky. I had one sent to me once that was along the lines of “I’m on holiday until August 12th and then again from August 24th.”
Agreed, the whole quirky-cute thibg annoys me, but human drives me up the wall. I cant articulate what about it grates me.
If you require immediate assistance in my absence, please contact John on 0912345678 or [email protected]. He will be available to deal with your inquiry.
“The purpose isn’t to let people know you’re out of the office, it’s to let them know you're not going to be responding,” says Muse career coach Benjamin Ritter, founder of Live for Yourself Consulting. It’s not about where you are physically, but rather whether or not you’ll see someone’s email and be available to react to it within a typical timeframe (which could differ depending on your role, company, and industry).
I usually put my boss in my OOO, because if something is so urgent that it needs to be delegated RIGHT NOW then it’s urgent enough that my boss should know about it, and he’s also in the best position to know who on the team to delegate it to based on everyone’s workloads and what can be dropped. But the most likely result is that whoever is emailing me either waits for me to get back because it’s not that urgent or goes to the next/backup person based on our central documentation about who to contact for particular issues.
We had someone at my old job whose auto-reply stated that they were at a “White Privilege Conference”. Granted, the conference was about dismantling White Privilege, but to someone outside our work who didn’t know that, I imagine that got quite the reaction!
I deal with this all day. I feel like some property management companies make their managers announce when they’re going to use the bathroom via auto-reply.
Ugh, I wouldn’t mind changing daily if I could have a couple of prepared responses for normal circumstances (i.e.: “I’ve left for the day, but I’ll be back in the office tomorrow morning to return your call”) to select from, but having to create a new message for Tuesday night when the info for Monday night is the same? Rage inducing. Email is asynchronous, you KNOW you’re not going to get an instant reply and sometimes you email knowing fully well that it won’t be seen until the next morning/week/whatever. Why on earth mandate an auto-reply for that?
Mike Vardy is a writer, speaker, productivity strategist, and founder of Productivityist. He is the author of The Front Nine: How to Start the Year You Want Anytime You Want, The Productivityist Playbook, and TimeCrafting: A Better Way to Get the Right Things Done, coming soon from Mango Publishing.
I am out of the office on leave and will return on September 25. Please contact Jean Awad at [email protected] in my absence.