until you have the client who calls, lvm, then when they don’t call back in an hour emails to complain they can never get hold of you.
For many roles, of course, the sort of OoO described wouldn’t work. But there are a lot of roles where people would survive just fine letting their requests sit for an extra week before forwarding again. And especially at smaller companies where there they might be pressed for coverage when people are out, I think it’s great to normalise that a job is basically ‘off-line’ for a week or two so that the employee can rest and recharge.

What we need in our work communication is not more professional politeness or less formal, chat-based messaging applications like Slack. We need honesty. The problem is that we’ve conditioned ourselves to see honesty as self-indulgent or disrespectful. I’d argue the opposite is true. Honesty, even if it’s a bit more inconvenient for all parties in the moment, pays dividends later. It builds trust. When my partner Anne Helen Petersen and I were interviewing people for our forthcoming book on remote work, a frequent lament from both middle managers and workers was that they didn’t feel like they knew how to succeed in their jobs; that they were guessing what their superiors and coworkers wanted and, even when they asked, they didn’t quite trust the responses they got back.
1.) Benvenuti alla John Doe. La nostra linea telefonica diretta non è attiva durante le vacanze. Potete trovare i nostri orari d’ufficio sul nostro sito web a: www.johndoe.de – Grazie per la fiducia accordataci. Auguriamo a voi e ai vostri cari buone vacanze, e felice anno nuovo.