Would this be acceptable in your workplace?

I think it’s unprofessional. I always say will be off until xx date, please contact xx or xx for urgent issues, otherwise I will respond when I return

No, but then I am quite firm in the knowledge that nobody else is going to pay my gas bill while I’m gone, so it will definitely be waiting for me when I get back! Lots of work related things end up being sent elsewhere when the out of office bounces back, or dealt with by someone else, so you could spend all day replying to emails only to get “ah nevermind it’s sorted now” in return.

Do you ignore the gas bill if it arrives when you're on holiday?

Not acceptable at DH work. One of the associate directors has the password to your email account and they check your emails daily and either reply themselves or send to another member of the team who will have a better idea of what has already been done or needs done to deal with. If anyone has booked a one day holiday after going to the football it is understood that they leave their work phone on and either advise the client or contractor that they are out of the office for the day and will deal with it the next working day or if urgent either let the client or contractor know who to speak to in the office that day. Alternatively phone the office themselves if they have already done some work on the job in question and let the office know what has been done, what the problem is and who to follow up with.

Not acceptable imo
a colleague of mine has an out of office that says ‘any emails during my leave will not be read and will be deleted upon return’

Would be frowned at in my place. I'm expected to leave ooo confirming expected dates of return and alternative contacts for enquiries that can't wait. I see this sort of thing creeping in among younger colleagues though. It may become the norm. I despair at their lack of commitment and admire their determination to protect their time in equal measure tbh.

Ridiculous. Does the company come to a standstill?
Dunno, seems a bit entitled to me.

I’ve seen it for long term leave (6 months plus) where I think it makes sense.

I had a few weeks off (7 or so) and mine OOO explained that I would be away for a while and left delegates who could be contacted. Otherwise I would go through the emails when I got back so it could be a couple more weeks after my return.

If you group emails in threads (on windows) it means you can read through a chain of emails from the most recent, and then delete all if no longer relevant.

YANBU and I have seen that before a couple of times. In each case I've copied the message sent, left it in the draft folder and then diarised to resend when the recipient returns to the office. It's a bit of a faff to be honest and enabling that type of Out of Office message is not very professional in my view.

I realise it’s not the done thing in most places, but actually this is way more sensible than the default position we all use (or all in terms of anywhere I ve worked or sent emails to ) of accepting emails just drop in whilst we are away, with sender just getting a polite OOO message saying “I’ll get back to you”

im tlaking about non externally focused stuff, not customer facing

im retired now, but was receiving up to 250 mails a day. I never could read all of them even when at work, and had to filter out a lot …but going away for two weeks meant I was coming back to 2500-3000 emails. In reality no one can catch up on that …not unless you’ve a very undemanding workload. 2500 emails alone would have taken me around 42 hours work at absolute min to open, scan through, and file/delete/action. Realistically it’s the minimum, and it would be about two weeks to catch up from two weeks away. I don’t have two weeks spare to do that on top of two weeks holiday- I was already in catch up mode after holidays with actual work I already had to deal with.

so, in reality, people who get a lot of emails will do this anyway. They simply won’t bother reading stuff, unless it jumps out at them, or someone follows up when they get back onto work.

another good reason to make very good use of title/headers explaining what action needed and when, to help people screen important/urgent stuff out without having to open the email.

And that’s the issue with this default position. People will get the OOO message and find someone else or do a work around, or by time someone has got back it is over and done with and world has moved on. But the email receiver doesn’t know that till they’re wading through all this crap on their inbox and contacting people.

those that can’t move on, will get OOO, and will come back with a “ did you read my email” once you get back, at which point you say, “no” but depending on what they say in terms of importance and urgency on the phone/new follow up email, you say “but I will now”

the waste created in terms of people’s time, effort etc for the default, is huge if you multiply that over a company - ours had 46000 employees globAlly…do the maths..youre talking about significant headcount wastage

it makes way better sense for defult to be that if OOO STOPS any messages landing in first place, or does, as in this posters case, state automatically to resend message when they’re back. Makes much much better use of people’s time and resources.

I’ve worked since mid 80s. This deluge of emails in your in box after time off, is a horrendous outcome of the rise of computers, emails, same time messaging and all the other ways companies make their staff always be on duty. People need time away. De stress. If you’re one of poor sods whose company insists you use your own device for emails, calls, mess engine etc, you are seeing these messages stack up on holiday - that doesn’t allow people good quality time away to switch off completely. It’s a real bugbear of mine that companies expect employees to use their own personal phones - just say no folks, it isn’t healthy.

pre email and same timing, we managed ok…people called on phone, listened to answer message. Put phone down and called agian when you got back..or did that strange thing of walking to their desk to talk…

external customers/client it’s a different ball game- but I’m not happy getting a OOO response with no one else to contact in meantime as a customer. I’d expect there to be cover and a person named, with email contact to forward to.

so actually, good on this person to challenge the norm and make sure they’re using their time effectively. People are upset becuase they just see their email ignored and asked to do something. But it makes much better use of resources this way round.

and as for people that send email to your in box when they KNOW you’re away on hols or worse, sick leave, they need to delay send emails automatically, or give themselves a talking to to realise they’re not that important, or the message inset, if it can simply sit in your inbox box for a number of weeks.

This would not be acceptable where I work. For one thing we get a lot of training messages, and reminders of systems access renewals, so anybody daft enough to just delete everything on return from holiday is missing all of that. Secondly and more importantly, it implies that the sender is spamming out stuff that's not targeted to the correct recipient, and the sender has nothing better to do than track other people's holidays. Our out-of-office only triggers on the first mail received from each user, so you'd need to keep a note in case you needed to send a second one to the same person, which would also need to be delayed till their return, but wouldn't trigger the out-of-office reminder! In manage my inbox just fine. It's not my job to do extra tasks so that other people don't have to manage theirs!

I think my colleagues would think I was a moron if I had that as my out of office message. 😂

For one, not all emails are sent by a person who will receive that automatic reply and re-send the message. A lot of the emails sent to me by publishers for example are through an automated system. If I miss the deadline because I don’t read emails sent while I’m on leave, my work doesn’t meet publication deadlines and doesn’t get published, which would get me in very hot water with my co-authors.

Beyond that, Dh runs his own business. You can’t ask a prospective client to not bother you on AL and to email again about the money they want to spend on your services in 2 weeks time. That’s a pretty fast way to lose a potential client.

Dh checks his email and responds to it regularly, even on leave. As do I, though not as much. In my industry, it’s the norm (unfortunately) for people to schedule and attend meetings even on holiday! I don’t, I think it’s bonkers, I have work life balance. But it wouldn’t be at all unusual. Lots of my colleagues see AL as time to catch up on work and they take loads of things they haven’t had time to do away with them to sit and work on from the beach (probably between meetings 🙄).

I got 6 out of office replies to 1 email today.
I’m not going to reschedule the emails to auto send on :
Monday to Jane
Tuesday to Bob
Wednesday week to Rita. etc.
They have the email it’s entirely to them to delete, Ignore, follow up on their return.

I guess it may work in organisations with low email traffic, where I work not a chance. I receive 100s of pointless spam emails and send upwards of 30 emails a day. Resending to align with everyone’s calendars would be carnage.

I've never seen this in real life and wouldn't be impressed. I also wouldn't resend unless it was purely to my benefit to get an answer.

@Worriedsickmostofthetime if you are using outlook on a desktop / laptop, it’s on the menu at the top called “options”. It’s a very useful tool.

This is where AI can be useful. Ask it to summarise your inbox, delete marketing emails, and flag up any actions.

Where did I said I read the 500 emails I get a day?

I read, perhaps, a quarter - if that.

I work with older generation Germans.

Their out of office.

"I am out of office until 7th of May. Your email will not be forwarded."

This would be encouraged at my office. A lot of emails are dealt with by the time you return so it wastes a lot of time clearing or following up on queries that have long been dealt with. Also, there’s a big push for MH, ‘when you’re off your off’ sort of thing, many people have work phones or access to work emails in their personal phones so work emails can often disturb down time. This is fine if it’s urgent, but they’re often not.

No.
If I've sent someone information about something, that is that task completed and I move to the next one.
If they are stupid enough to delete it, then that's their loss. They've missed out on that information. I don't have the capacity to start lists of who might read their e-mails on which days. Nor do I have the capacity to go back to a task that I have finished because someone else is too lazy to do their job properly.

That works for people working for the same organisation, but not for all the other people I send e-mails to.

It’s becoming more and more common, I rather like it as it means you actually get holiday time rather than having to make up for it afterwards. I work on a broadly similar basis. I’ll filter the several thousand unread email for anything external or from my boss / senior people. The rest I’ll assume either got dealt with in my absence, or if it’s still needed they’ll mail me again. I just don’t have the time to work out whether two weeks of requests are still current.

It’s common at my work place. I do leave a ‘handover’ person to delicate to in my ooo but if it’s not urgent and can wait for my return then people can just schedule to send on my return.

i however see by this thread that many people don’t know how to do that so i guess they would find it rude or inconvenient to them.

when you get 100s of emails a day it takes so long to go through inbox when you get back whilst also still receiving those 100s of emails you normally get.

Same never seen it. Standard reply is I’m on leave and will respond upon my return.

Very common in my workplace. The OOO is to inform that recipient is unavailable and the expectation is to contact one of the alternatives or if absolutely no one else can help - re contact on their return.

Discussed this with a senior manager only the other week, was told that she returned to over 300 emails within a week and had no means of spending that time catching up with similar numbers pouring in every day. Therefore the box is deleted and if it is important she would get the second request on her return.

I think it is a pragmatic approach and stops people from becoming trapped in email answering on their leave or working over hours to catch up on return (something that was previously an exception in the organisation but it slowly being eradicated due to stances like this).