She may want to talk to her IT folks to see if they can help her switch this around.
I am currently out of office on annual leave. I’ll get back to you straight away when I return on [end date]. If it’s urgent you can contact [contact’s name] on (contact’s email).
.
Seconded, with one exception: I got one once from a distant coworker which said “I have broken my arm in a kitten-related fall and will be out for (…)”. Everyone else uses boilerplate language so that one definitely stood out, but I thought it was the right level of mildly amusing.
Many professional out of office messages are aimed towards providing a direct line of communication by notifying your absence and providing an alternative i am currently out of the office, with limited no access to email.
Usually also right before a deadline, after ignoring warnings about said deadline for 3 weeks.
I might sound nitpicky but the language is important. “Might” or “may be” or “slower than usual” are vague and don’t offer the sender all that much information about when you’re really going to respond to them. Worse, they do a horrible job of protecting the time of the email receiver who, as the responder notes, is not in the office! Such a responder implies that, not only will the vacationer reply to the email, but they may not even miss a beat. They may be slow to respond, but they also might not.
When one of my colleagues went on vacation, he sent an out-of-office message that was both clever and smart. First, he sent the recipient on an imaginary scavenger hunt to “the highest peak of the tallest mountain.” He used humorous absurdity to make it clear that he would not be checking email while he was away.
Duh. We're in the travel industry. Of course, an out of office message involving dolphin-speak would be at the top of our list! Who doesn't love a dolphin?
On the funnier side, my vacations tend to be trips to either see my favorite band in far flung places or going to conventions for my hobby, so for a while I added a checklist at the end of my OOO that said:
I have a co-worker who isn’t exactly known as a hard worker. To the point that the fact she’s still employed has been a real hit to the overall team morale. Anyway, she has an auto-reply that basically says, “I’m at work but I’m really overwhelmed by all the things I have to do today so I will get back to you when I can.” Makes us all even angrier that she still has a job.
It might feel strange to include happy client testimonials in your out-of-office responder, but doing so is easier than you think. A quick note that suggests they read the testimonials if they’re interested in a product or service you offer is an easy inclusion or postscript to your email. Just limit the amount you share to one or two.
An away message will generally be a 160-character auto-reply message that can be turned on or off as needed.
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.
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If it’s anything less than a business day, it just becomes this extra beacon of our completely toxic and out of whack work culture that insists we be reachable every second.
People really just need to know that I’m either definitely not going to reply (annual leave) or might but delayed (all day meetings) plus when I’m back and who to contact if it is urgent.
I will always assume it is an inability to interact in an adult fashion with the world of technology. There is no good reason to avoid voicemails so aggressively – those that are doing so should probably be seeking therapy to overcome their issues with technology and/or the human voice. A lot of us process text faster and more accurately than speech, especially poor-audio-quality speech recorded by someone who didn’t bother to leave all the relevant information. Most voice mails are bad.