I work in a culture where even when you say you won’t have access to email, you are expected to be checking. I include this only on the internal auto-response, so that the people in my company know that when I say I won’t have access to email (which is also explained in the email), I mean it. Nothing else seems to work.
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.
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The problem is that some people will just keep the old message, with contact information for their coverage and whatnot. If you do this, it’s important to change the date.
The best solution, in my experience, is for the person covering your work to cc’ you on responses to the forwarded request. Pay No Attention To The Man Behind The Curtain* June 3, 2021 at 11:27 am
Hijacking this with a question- what do you do when you no longer have an co-workers to serve as an out of office contact? I find myself putting up the OOO less and less, because there’s no one left to respond to anything in my absence (beyond my supervisor who has no knowledge of how to do the tasks of my job).
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Setting Up Vacation and Holiday Call Rules [Video] If you’re going on vacation or closing your business for a holiday, you can set up special call rules with RingCentral. Call rules can dictate anything from forwarding calls to another extension, playing a customized message, to shutting off voicemail.
Further, given how poorly humor — especially sarcastic or snarky, even if mild — translates in text, you're running a moderate risk of pissing someone off through no fault of their own, for no reason other than to indulge yourself.
Total and utter cringe! Sounds like something a cheeky 11th grader would think is the epitome of word smithing. If someone sent this out at my work everyone would make fun of them and HR would make them change the message.
Thank you for your email. I’m currently offline until [date] to celebrate the holiday with my loved ones—without my phone in front of my face.
Yeah, announcing you were going to delete emails unread and expecting the sender to resend when you return would NEVER fly in my office. I’d get executive complaints about that, especially if it went to a client or outside party – if a client can’t reach you, they will reach out to someone else who may not work at your organization and you lose business. I feel like this delete-it-all philosophy would only work for an entirely internal role where timelines are more relaxed, and even then, I feel it’s a bit unprofessional to foist your own catch-up work onto others, especially if they’ve been backfilling for you while you were OOO.
I feel this so hard! I am 14 days away from my PCS (permanent change of station), and will be on leave for a month. I’ve been drafting my OOO multiple times, not just out of a desire to edit but because it reminds me that I am LEAVING my current terrible office.
7. "Hello, this is [your name] at [company]. Thanks for calling. Please leave your name, number, and the reason you'd like to chat, and I'll get back to you ASAP."
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.
Much appreciated and I followed these instructions to the detail…still need more help with this as it is designed only for “while driving” mode. If I’m not driving, do I have auto-reply to text options?
If you think someone else at First Round Capital might be able to help you, feel free to email my assistant, Fiona ([email protected]) and she’ll try to point you in the right direction.