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I don’t usually read the messages anyway, I just take it as information that the recipient won’t see my message right away. If that will cause issues, I’ll contact someone else.
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I hate to break it to you, but I’m on annual leave until [end date] and will have limited access to my emails until then.
Hi, I am currently out of the office from [MM/DD] to [MM/DD]. I will do my best to respond promptly to your email when I return. Please contact [name] at [email] or [phone] for any urgent matters.
I agree that the reasons are not relevant. But at my last company, a coworker had overly short out of office messages. Examples: “out of office today.” Or “out of office until Monday.” With no additional information about coverage, etc. Those always felt overly curt to me and made me wonder, is this person okay? Was this OOO planned or are they on the verge of a mental breakdown? (It was a very toxic culture so this wasn’t out of the question). I would be curious to hear others perspectives on this. Is too little information just as bad?
If you can’t wait for a response, my colleague will be happy to take care of you. Just email them at [email protected]. 8. "I am currently out of the office and probably chilling on the beach. Enjoy your work week."
I will find a few moments of holiday bliss once they watch Elf for the seventh time this month. I’ll seize the quiet to check my email once a day. I will only respond to urgent matters but will reply to all emails upon my return.
One of your European connections here. When I know the person covering me will also be away for part of the time I’m gone, I get another colleague to cover for those dates and put that in my OOO. Saying “Your e-mail will not be read” or similar is really off-putting. The youth worker at my church does this and I find it infuriating. Of course it won’t. That’s the point of a holiday. When I get an answer from someone who reads his e-mails on vacation I’m pleasantly surprised.
Holiday messages are short quotes, where people wish happiness or luck upon others. Employees generally issue these messages before certain festivities as a courtesy or to let recipients know that you care about them. Depending on who the recipient is, your holiday message may be more formal or casual in tone.
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What we need in our work communication is not more professional politeness or less formal, chat-based messaging applications like Slack. We need honesty. The problem is that we’ve conditioned ourselves to see honesty as self-indulgent or disrespectful. I’d argue the opposite is true. Honesty, even if it’s a bit more inconvenient for all parties in the moment, pays dividends later. It builds trust. When my partner Anne Helen Petersen and I were interviewing people for our forthcoming book on remote work, a frequent lament from both middle managers and workers was that they didn’t feel like they knew how to succeed in their jobs; that they were guessing what their superiors and coworkers wanted and, even when they asked, they didn’t quite trust the responses they got back.
Your out of office message can link to testimonials from your happy clients. For those of us in travel, you could try something like:
Hahahahaha, reminds me of the time the entire giant department (hundreds of people) had to sit through a SLIDE SHOW of a higher up’s trip to Europe, in person. They sent a survey afterwards–thankfully anonymous–and I said it was extremely inappropriate to make us sit through his holiday snaps when most of us can’t go on vacation at all and it was supposed to be a WORK meeting.
In 2013, researcher danah boyd wrote a LinkedIn blog post advocating for the nuclear option which was framed in the piece as an “email sabbatical.” Coming back to an empty inbox after a vacation is should be a break from the insanity, not a procrastination of it,” boyd wrote of the decision to send everything to the trash.
While you shouldn’t use a vacation message like the first example in this article, it doesn’t mean you can’t have a little bit of fun with your emails.
If you are part of the sales team in your organization, out of office emails is a great way to promote your products even while you're out of office. Hello, Thank you for your email. I am out of office until April 25 and I'll respond to your email as soon as possible upon return. While you're here, please check out our new book, "How to 10X your sales." You can get a copy at Amazon.com. In case of an emergency, please reach out to my colleague. Sandra Sloan at [email protected] or 123-456-7890. Regards, Kevin Gabriel Sales Associate. Examples of Permanent Out-Of-Office Email Autoresponder
Written by Aja Frost @ajavuu