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.
Our office will remain closed until the end of this week for Thanksgiving Holidays. We assure you that all your emails will be answered as soon as we return to the office. Happy Thanksgiving!
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Our senior leadership has admitted to not checking voicemails since we started working remotely…almost 15 months ago. It made me feel so good. I hate voicemail.
Ha reminds me of an admin here once who would leave like 10 bullet points on who to contact for what. We got a kick out of the point that was “for catering emergencies…contact…”.
Thankfully, setting this up in Gmail is easy to do and only takes a few minutes. Here are step-by-step instructions for setting your out-of-office message, plus some helpful examples you can steal for your own use:
Have you sent a proper farewell email to the whole office, thanking everyone and wishing them well?
I’m guilty of the “pre-vacation warmip” email…but I send it on Wednesday so Last-minute Louie can contact me before I go out on Friday. (And it’s not all-office!)
You got this email immediately (classic autoresponder behavior), which means I’m out of office on vacation.
The answer lies in writing an effective out-of-office message to help reduce the interruptions. “Let key people know you’ll be gone before you leave,” says Ivan Misner, founder of the global business network BNI and author of Who’s In Your Room? The Secret to Creating Your Best Life. “That will help reduce your email. Then craft an out-of-office message for everyone else.”
Last month, President Thorsett announced that the university is extending all employees’ paid winter break by one week to decrease density on campus and to recognize your extraordinary efforts this fall. Our campus closure will begin starting next week on Dec. 14. Work will resume — whether you are working remotely or on campus — Monday, Jan. 4.
I use a basic OOO message – “Hi! I’m out of the office x date(s). I will return your email when I’m back at my computer on x date. If you have an urgent matter, please contact x or y. Have a nice weekend/holiday/etc!/Thanks!” My office WANTS us to use more personal and witty OOO messages like this article’s message. And that stresses me out. I don’t want to spend time worried about whether my OOO is witty. I don’t want to annoy other people just looking for basic info like when am I back and who they can contact in the meantime. I correspond a lot with third parties on serious matters (legal), and I don’t think a message like that is appropriate. So, I just keep using my basic message and hope my supervisor’s supervisor doesn’t email me and see that I’m not “trying.” Ugh.
10. Office Closed for Annual Vacation. Use this template for your annual year-end vacation. Hi (specify the Name field id), I am out of the office for my annual year-end vacation and will not be able to check my mail until after the New Year.
When I’m back in the office and going through emails, I’ll sometimes send a note of “I’m catching up on my emails and saw you had XX question – did you still need help with that?” before doing any in-depth research.
To set automatic out of office replies on the Microsoft Outlook desktop app, go to File > Automatic Replies > Send automatic replies.
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.
I have a coworker that purposely leaves them on the first day that she’s back in the office (even though it said she would be back today) because she thinks it signals that she’s still unavailable (while she needs some time to catch up.) I think it’s a bit confusing. I personally would feel weird doing it because it seems like I just never came back from vacation.
An away message will generally be a 160-character auto-reply message that can be turned on or off as needed.