I say I am “away from my desk”, or “unavailable”. To indicate I am working, “I will be at my desk from xhour to yhour on xday”.
Several of my coworkers still have page-long “Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, our department will be…” auto-replies set up 24/7, even though the basic function of our office has barely changed. I’m currently working odd part time hours right now, and if there weren’t so many of these annoying emails going around, I’d have one that clarifies my email timelines, but I don’t want to be another spammer.
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I’ll add “with limited access to email and voicemail” if I’m out because of work-related stuff (back when we used to have offsite meetings!), and “with no access to email and voicemail” if I’m truly on PTO.
It’s really only meant as a courtesy but if your culture is different I can see where it’s eye-roll y.
That’s it. That’s all. Simple and to the point, this message will let people know that you can’t respond to messages.
The holiday out of office best wishes are sent to the offices when the staff of the office remains out of office for the holidays. The wishes are sent to the office marked to the staff to make them feel good. The wishes can be sent through mails and text messages to the office mails and numbers.
The best holiday messages are short, cheerful and specific. Try to include the person’s name, as well as a memory from the holiday season or year.
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Of course, every message sends a message, even a barebones OOO that seems to say nothing more than that you’re away until next week, so why not try to inject a little personality? You could get quirky by giving your auto-responder robot a personality. You could dispense with words altogether and substitute a gif or emojis. Or how about a little retro concrete poetry – you know, where you arrange your words on the screen to form an image of a palm tree or a pina colada? It might be worth noting here that the amount of personality you inject depends on your trade. What earns you cachet in the creative industries might backfire in the financial sector, for instance.
Boss would put up an OOO when attending an event off-site, but would still be answering their emails, which meant that I would get “Boss said you were the correct contact, can you help?” Inevitably, I would respond and, two hours later, Boss would too, cc-ing me on the original email in which they shared the exact same info I had earlier that day. It was MADDENING.
I hope you’re having an A+ [week, month]. I’m out of the office at this great conference [link to the event]. It takes place on [date] at [time] in [city and location].
I don’t have access to email because I don’t have a work cell & I don’t open my work laptop on my days off.
Here are some examples of effective text for out of office messages you can use to keep your clients notified of your absence and unavailability during a holiday.
Again, this will depend HUGELY on what sort of role it is (an external-facing vendor, for example, should probably not use something like this). But for many internal requests, it is not power-tripping to ask someone to either redirect their email or wait until a later date to send it.
Oh shoot. You need something and I’m unavailable today. Here’s the good news: you have options.
Thanks for your email. I’m currently on holiday with my family for the first time in what seems like forever. For urgent matters, [NAME] will help you. She doesn’t have a cape, but she is basically Superwoman. See you real soon.
Just because it’s an automated message doesn’t mean you can’t seize the opportunity to collect leads. Provide the opportunity to collect an email or address within your text response. Thanks for reaching out to JT Morgan. We’ll get back to you shortly. In the meantime, have you subscribed to our weekly investor newsletter? https://txt.st/PQB