I am celebrating the season. I'll respond to your email when I return to work on [date]. Thank you for your patience, and I hope you and your loved ones have a joyous holiday.
Hello, I’m out of the office until [DATE]. However, I will be taking periodic breaks from binge-watching everything I’ve missed to check my email [once per day/every evening/occasionally] while I’m away. If this matter isn’t time-sensitive, rest assured that I’ll respond when I’m back in the office. But, if this is an urgent request, please resend any messages that require my immediate attention with a subject line of “URGENT: [Original Subject]”. All the best.
.
Nowadays, it’s getting increasingly more frequent for criminals to use the information we share to their own advantage. They could even use that information to break into a home or an office.
By the way, [Name], our [Title], will be giving a speech sharing unique experience in [field]. I think you’ll enjoy it.
Please note that I will be completely disconnected from email and will not be checking messages until I return. So, if you need urgent assistance, please send an email to [Contact Name] at [contact email].
Q. Are there any departments or clinics on the Health Science Campus that will be closed during winter break?
“For example, if a hacker knows that the chief financial officer of a company is OOO, thanks to the information in the auto-reply message, an attacker could impersonate the CFO on email and target another individual in the company’s finance team asking them to make a payment or update bank details for them while they are offline,” says Sadler.
I might sound nitpicky but the language is important. “Might” or “may be” or “slower than usual” are vague and don’t offer the sender all that much information about when you’re really going to respond to them. Worse, they do a horrible job of protecting the time of the email receiver who, as the responder notes, is not in the office! Such a responder implies that, not only will the vacationer reply to the email, but they may not even miss a beat. They may be slow to respond, but they also might not.
And that's it. Easy peasy, right? We know there are tons of genius out of office messages we missed, so if you've got a favorite don't forget to share it with us in the comments below!
Give them the dates. Don't leave your sender guessing. Let them know when you'll be out and the date you'll be back in the office — not when you're returning home.
Maybe you’re still available on email, but your location means there might be a little bit of an issue with time differences. This response is clever and a little bit geeky!
While you’re writing and activating your out of office message, avoid including the following:
How do I add the District Events and Religious Holiday calendars to my calendar in Outlook?
JOBSFind a jobRecruiter directoryPopular jobsPopular searchesBrowse locationsCareer adviceHelpContact usContact a REED officeAdvertise a jobCOURSESContact usFind a courseView all subjectsUniversity coursesDiscount coursesFree coursesCorporate trainingCareer guidesAdvertise a courseMORE FROM reed.co.ukAbout usWork with usLove MondaysFor developersPress officeREEDReed Group ServicesTempzone: timesheets & holidayAuthorise timesheetsReed GlobalReed in PartnershipCareers with REEDJames Reed – Official SiteKeep Britain Working Learn how to answer 101 of the most common questions now. Buy James Reed's latest book »
Share News Tips SecurelyIndividual SubscriptionsGroup SubscriptionsRepublishingContracts & TendersExecutive Job SearchAdvertise with the FTFollow the FT on TwitterFT TransactSecondary Schools
But I also believe there’s meaningful power in the mundane cultural norms we set and practice. Email, for better or worse, makes up a large chunk of how knowledge workers communicate. So much of this communication is muddled by broken email habits and larger anxieties around performing productivity. We’re constantly nervous about asking too much of others or doing too little on behalf of our coworkers. But we’re also stuck in work patterns that force us to communicate constantly and normalize working and demanding things from colleagues at all hours.
First, here’s the out-of-message for people who don’t like watching video (although the person in the video is funny and really brings the message to life):