You are under no obligation to share the reason for your absence. Even if you’re on parental leave, “on leave” or “out of the office” is sufficient. Unfortunately, discrimination against pregnant people and parents happens, and if you don’t want to disclose that you’re on parental leave, you don’t have to.
Hello! Thank you for your message. I am currently out of the office, with no email access. I will be returning on [date]. If you need immediate assistance before then, you may reach me at my mobile – [mobile number]. Thanks!
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My immediate team does this with calendar invites for our scheduled PTO (set to “Show As Free”), and I actually find it really helpful. I certainly wouldn’t want to get an email from dozens of people that I may or may not need to get in touch with, but if I am quickly looking at my calendar to set up time with my team, it’s helpful to have a reminder of who is out and who is not. I definitely wouldn’t remember if my teammates sent an email or a chat. I’ll invite relevant coworkers to an event called “Applesauced on PTO” that shows up as free on their calendar, and make a separate event for myself to be marked out of office in the system
Website: https://www.exclaimer.com/email-signature-handbook/10091-top-10-christmas-email-signature-tips
Sample out-of-office email message: “Thank you for your message. The University of Toledo is closed for winter break. If your message requires a response, I will reply after New Year's Day during normal business hours. Happy holidays!”
My European colleagues get an extended summer holiday all at the same time, which means we get OOO notes like this:
I think humor is fine (the hard-to-misunderstand kind), but definitely less than 100 words of it. “I’m out of the office returning Thursday June 10th. Please contact (shared mailbox email address) for support or call (person name) if the matter is urgent.”
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.”
We are having a temporary office move soon, and our head of facilities was delighted he didn’t need to find data ports for the phones as well as the PCs ;)
So from [date] to [date], I am going to be laid out in the sun catching a tan and reading a book.
You are hereby informed that a large number of our company workers are going to take their days off due to extreme weather conditions prevailing in the city. Due to this, there would be much difficulty in coming and going so it is a mutual decision from the heads of our office to make it closed from 25-12-20XX to 02-01-20XX. This temporary closure will result in delayed answers to your queries, so these will be answered right after the opening of our office. All the delays are regretted.
Hey there! I’m on holiday right now. I’ll try to reply to your message ASAP. Talk to you later!
My boss does not understand OOO and thinks I saw his email and sent the reply personally and does not understand why I didn’t answer the actual question.
That’s weird! I would specifically not say maternity leave, since I don’t want to invite a lot of questions about the birth, baby, etc. when I come back to work. Just let me focus on catching up on my job! (I work with a lot of external clients, though. Internal-only would be different.)
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The information in your after hours greeting should remain concise and essential to the caller's needs. Example: Thank you for calling Cutlas IT Solutions. Our office is currently closed. Regular store hours are 9 am to 7 pm, Monday through Saturday. Please leave a voicemail with your name and phone number for our staff after the beep. 6.
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