TEMPLATE #1. (Office closed for holiday notice: Memo to all employees) Dear All, Please note that our office will be closed on (day), (date) because of the (mention reason). The office will then open as usual on the next working day. This is for your kind information. Do spread this info among other colleagues.
1) Communicate when a person will be back, or if they are out for an indeterminate period of time, tell me who I should be contacting instead 2) Communicate what I should expect. (For example, when I do my monthly reports, I have an out of office message that says that I’ll be slow to respond. I *will* actually check my email at least a couple of times, but I generally won’t respond to anything non-urgent.) 3) If the person is in a job that handles urgent requests, list who I need to contact instead if it can’t wait until they get back.
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I meant email. The phone calls were similar, but a whole other problem. Your overdue notice? Did you discuss it with Head of Circulation (who knew the background)? No? Let me transfer you.
In spite of your best efforts to notify people ahead of time, not everyone will get the notification that you're going to be shut down. Make sure that you: Post signs about the shutdown and when you will be back Change your voicemail message and have a plan for what to do if your voicemail is full: will it notify you? Is there an alternate number to call? Put together an "out of office" email that lets people who attempt to contact you know when you will be back Make sure you have a call tree for emergencies, and that everyone knows who he or she will be responsible for calling in the event of an emergency
I say I’m off-duty, or in non-working status, but I come from a DOD background. I no longer like to say out of the office. Unavailable is good too.
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I mean, this is what I pretty much did upon returning from my maternity leaves but I would never put it into an email! My maternity leave OOO was the vague “I am on extended leave and am not anticipated to return until X. Please contact Joe or Fergus in my absence.” X being a vague time-frame based on my due date and the length of my leave. No one is waiting 3+ months for an answer so I did get to delete most of the 500 emails I got during my most recent leave! I did once have someone internal tell me I should say maternity leave rather than leave, but really, what does it matter? I’m gone for a few months and no one outside of the company really NEEDS to know why.
Thank you for you message. Our offices are closed until [insert date] and I am out of the office. Our entire staff is reflecting on a wonderful year, resetting, and recharging for 2018. We will respond promptly after the holidays, but in the meantime we will be busy doing the following:
Thank you for your email. Your credit card has been charged $5.99 for the first ten words and $1.99 for each additional word in your message. This message is automated because until [DATE] because I’m moving to [LOCATION]. That’s right. A cross country road trip from [CITY] to [CITY]. I’ll get back to you when we pull into the driveway.
3. We do holidays our own way. When you hear the name Black Friday, what’s the first thing that comes to your mind? It’s probably one of the following: discounts, sales, or free shipping.
I just say out of the office. It helps that I have a room that, among other things, functions as an office, but I don’t think that would change my reply. Whether its a real or metaphorical office, you’re still not at work, so it counts.
A. While The University of Toledo Medical Center and its operations must remain open for our patients and guests, yes – there will be a limited number of offices closed on HSC during winter break because they are academic, non-hospital or non-patient care areas. Leaders of those departments are responsible for ensuring their students, team members, customers, vendors and other stakeholders know in advance that they will be closed during winter break. Their email and voicemail messages also should inform customers of the specific closure dates.
The OOO definitely has those two pieces. But it could be 1 of 4 people who handle things when I’m out (depending on what it is) and they may not know at all that the requestor had reached out to me first / forget to cc me. So, I’d see this as me adding to my OOO “if you contact person X, please keep me cc’ed on the message you send to person x”?
Optionally, click the Attach Invoice checkbox to automatically attach the customer’s invoice to the auto-response.
The UPS driver is scheduled to pick me back up on the eighth. He should deliver me back to the office by the ninth (assuming he’s not late like he was this time).
Huh. This is a rare column from you that I disagree with almost entirely. I guess to start with what I think you get right, there's no need to apologize for being out of office, and no one should feel obligated to deal with anything other than a legitimate emergency (which are, in most fields, truly rare) while on vacation or while taking time off.
I had to explain to her that the email was still there, just like a voicemail, they’d get it on their return.