[Company name] office is closed today for the [holiday name] and will reopenam [date]. [Company name] Online and our website is available throughout.
In the normal times, my friends and I used to do “Crawl 4 Cancer” which is a bar crawl (aka debauchery day) where all proceeds go to cancer research. It’s great! But…yEEah, we’re not crawling FOR cancer…we’re very much against it! We laugh about it every year and the jokes never get old.
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Thank you for your note. I’m currently out of the office, returning on [date]. I’ll respond to your message then.
But your out-of-office message is as much for you as it is for the people receiving it, especially during the pandemic. “Boundaries have taken a big hit right now,” Ritter says. There’s a lot of pressure associated with missing something at work, and that stress has been heightened without the typical separation between office and home and with the added fear caused by an uncertain economy. An OOO message is a chance to set expectations, “to give yourself some breathing room and to ensure other people aren’t thinking negatively about you,” Ritter says, and it’s crucial for your mental health.
I’ve heard “please respond at *your* earliest convenience,” but never the other way around.
But I'm someone who has co-workers in almost every time zone, on almost every continent, and in almost every geographic region, and I simply can't imagine using most of these examples with co-workers in, say, South Korea or Japan or Nicaragua. Like, the account manager who reaches out to me for help accessing a particular system in Seoul doesn't need my personal story about why I'm taking time off and all the fun (or, for that matter, not fun) things that I'll be doing — they need help gaining access to [system] in order to complete the job tasks that have been assigned to them. If I am not available to help them, they need to know who can, and if there just *isn't* anyone else who can perform this task, they need to know when I will be able to.
When crafting an out-of-office reply, keep in mind that you must provide sufficient detail so that recipients understand exactly when you’ll not be able to respond.
While injecting a little humor into your vacation email message can sometimes be a good idea – depending on your company and contacts – avoid oversharing and keep it professional at all times.
When we have people go on maternity leave we normally arrange with them for mail to be forwarded directly to the person covering their leave, (but I’m in the UK so normally they will be out for 6-12 months)
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There were a lot of bilingual staff at my last job, and they always did their out of office messages in both languages. But who knows, maybe the Welsh translator was in a rush and forgot. An agency that handles government translations like road signs might be expected have such rules. On the other hand, never underestimate the boneheadedness of the monolinguals. Especially English ones.
And describing their boss as elusive….taken in context with the rest of the message…seems a bit of an attempt to say, “I run this ship solo so good luck with getting them to “help”, lol”
You can get quite creative and figure it out by yourself. However, here’s an example.
It’s possible I might quote from some responses to this in an upcoming column, so please note if you don’t want me to do that with yours!
Please include their names, phone numbers, and email addresses. If you handle multiple areas, let colleagues and clients know what each person specializes in so they can contact the right person for help.
Hi, I’m out of the office with no access to email until [MM/DD]. If your request is urgent, you can contact [email] for assistance. Otherwise, I’ll get back to you as quickly as possible when I return. While you wait, subscribe to our fantastic newsletter[link]. Get actionable tips once per week geared toward helping you grow your business.
Now that you know what you should and shouldn’t include, how do you go about crafting the perfect out-of-office vacation message?