Would this be acceptable in your workplace?

What if the sender is on leave when the recipient returns, then the sender has to ask someone to resend during a handover which is ridiculous. No I don't agree with this. Having a build up of emails after leave is the employers problem and responsibility to come up with a system for cover.

However a good idea would be an immediate automated response bouncing back the email and providing details of an alternative email during leave, then asking the sender if they want to proceed with the email to hit a particular instruction, send anyway etc. That would naturally filter any unnecessary stuff away and prevent duplications. It can't be that hard to organise, again entirely the employers responsibility.

I'd flipping love to be able to do it with certain care providers who send emails to personal clinicians for everything a notch up from a paper cut and flag EVERYTHING as high priority - but it would not go down well.

We just put an expected return date, and signpost people to our single point of access (which the damned care providers should be using anyway) or our shared service inbox which whoever is in work should be monitoring at least once a day.

Mind you I quite like the leisurely coffee and trudge through the emails gentle return to work anyway to get over the trauma of being back from holidays.

I've only seen this once, from a professor on a graduate course on which I was a student. Certainly established the pecking order!

This was my thought.

I work in consultancy. Absolutely no way could we treat emails like that. I can't expect people to chase me multiple times to give me work. 😱

Perfectly acceptable except mine says if the email is still urgent after that date resend, with names of who to speak to in the interim

Or, in the case of some companies, the email is never delivered, just deleted, if the member of staff is on holiday :)

It's normal for internal emails on my organisation, but we also provide an alternate contract for urgent things. Realistically most emails aren't important. Anything that's really important will be remembered

Haha!! I like your style!!!😅

That’s ((office working) life!

Mine states if urgent email xx otherwise I will deal with it on my return.

My managers internal one used to be “I’m not interested until x date unless the place is on fire”
he had to change it after the place actually set on fire (it wasn’t him!)

I know i sometimes get OOO messages. I never read them. I just assume the person will get it once they're back because I didn't send a self deleting email.

Yes, if it comes by post I won't be at home to receive it and pay it. If it comes by e-mail, I will only be sporadically checking e-mails and if abroad not at all so it might be a day or three before I pick it up, and even then, I will likely leave it until I get home. That is no problem because the deadline for paying a bill is always several days or longer from receiving it, precisely because people might not pick it up immediately. Of course, with direct debit being the norm these days, I don't have to worry about paying bills at all, it gets done automatically, same with credit card statements.

I would take a dim view of anybody working for me setting this out of office. It’s rude, unhelpful and unprofessional.

I've never heard of a request to resend, but out-of-office automated responses are the norm in my previous and current job, both in my workplace and from people I have contacted. Usually the response states either when the person will be back or suggests another person to contact if a response to the e-mail is important. It is a good idea, it saves any anxiety over sending an e-mail, failing to get a response, and wondering if the e-mail actually made it to their inbox.

It’s annoying and wouldn’t be something I would do but just set your email to schedule send on the date they return.

This would not be acceptable in my workplace. I’d pull up an employee on my team for this and would expect my manager to do the same for me.

At my company you’re expected to name backups in your OOO msg and figure out what still needs addressed in your email when you return.

My method is on my return I move all emails from my time off into a temporary folder. From that I scan for anything that I know didn’t get sent to my backup and all emails received the day prior.

I have my email viewed as a conversation so when I go back the OOO folder it’s super easy to see what is still open and what has been resolved. I don’t spend a lot of time on these emails though. And mostly figure it’s been taken care of or someone will send again if it hasn’t been. But it stays in the folder and available until I empty it after my next long time off. I don’t bother with the folder if I’ve been gone less than a week.

I never did it but a senior manager where I used to work went further than that. Actually saying all emails received during leave would be deleted and to resend after x date if important. Nobody else did that. I don’t know how they got away with it really.

Probably not - I would expect emails to be dealt with upon return.

I put my out of office on and state I will deal with on return. There is no one else who does my job (technical specialist) so they would have to wait.

A couple of years ago I came back from 7 days leave and had just over 1500 emails. I had to go through each item it took me 2 days. Now I have an ooo which says I am in leave and your email will be forwarded to my admin team. Then any emails that come in are forwarded so that someone else can deal with it. Not sure I would be happy if any of my team were to say resend after I return .but I didn't want to have to spend days dealing with old emails again

Didn't say read, said deal with. That's obviously a combination of reading and immediate delete when you get 500 a day. What I'm saying is why can the big list of emails on your return be dealt with in the same way instead of a full cull and expectation of others resending if important.

So unprofessional and entitled! Expecting someone else to have to remember your return date and re-send the email. Wow! Can’t believe people think this is reasonable and aren’t given the boot!

I give an alternative contact if their query is urgent otherwise I’ll reply when I get back. I don’t have the sort of job where I can just ignore things but some emails I get do require attention, particularly if I’m on block leave. I’m a manager in a standalone role.

I think it depends a lot on the place and nature of the work.

Most staff in my public sector employer have direct emails from councillors and the local MP. If we put that OOO on our emails we'd be in serious trouble. Their time is more important than ours is the mantra.