My voicemail is set up to forward to my email. I did this years ago, way before the Late Unpleasantness. And it’s perfect for working remotely. (I have trained my students to use email. My colleagues hate voicemail too, so we use email and gchat. Or walk down the hall when we’re live and in person)
The problem was that this had to be done on deadline and people wanted me to do other things for them that weren’t time sensitive. So I put up an internal-only out of office that basically said “hey sorry I’m working on project X and we have a tight deadline. If this isn’t urgent I’ll get back to you next week. If it is urgent, let me know!”
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Website: https://www.roberthalf.com/blog/salaries-and-skills/vacation-time-how-to-craft-an-effective-out-of-office-message
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!
I think people still understand that out of office can refer to home office as well. But you could say “unavailable” or “away from work”.
Front makes it easy to save vacation responders and turn them on and off. If you're not on Front (yet!) here's how to save one in Gmail or Outlook. Then just copy your message into your vacation responder, rest assured your emails will get a response, and hit that glorious "Sign out" button.
While the sender waits for your response to their email, take the sting out of your absence by involving them in a holiday survey, like the one below.
For non-urgent inquiries, I will return your message as soon as I get back in the office.
An automatic response should include the date when you left, a reason (vacation, sick leave, a conference, etc) and, if possible, the date when you plan to come back. Thank your client for their email, promise to get back to it as soon as possible and apologize for the inconvenience. Also, it should be obvious that you’re out of office from the first sentence.
(Depending on your email host, the process of setting up your out of office assistant may vary. You can find a guide on how to access your out of office settings in Outlook here.)
So now this email is working overtime with the flood of enquiries, spam, well-wishes, and broken hearts.
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.
The main thing to equivocate over for this sort of response is what details to include as a backup contact method. If your line of work means clients might need to urgently contact you, a mobile number might be appropriate, or if you’re lucky enough to have an assistant (must be nice), you can list their contact details.
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OMG if I got this OOO message I would pee my pants laughing! I think its brilliant! (But perhaps thats my weirdness popping out again… shoo shoo get back)
Will this work if the phone is in airplane mode? I am hiking in the Sierras with no cell service.
Here are the best 11 office closed due to inclement weather messages that will help you to notify your company and customers of current activities. ----- Due to inclement weather conditions and for the safety of our staff, we have elected to close our office. Our phones will still be monitored by our technicians. However, our main office location will be closed for dropoffs, pickups, and …