Would this be acceptable in your workplace?

I work in an industry where usually an email means the sender requires an immediate or urgent response. Often I can get several hundred emails a day. My out of office will always direct people to other help points, my phone will be on divert to a colleague and it will say that all emails will be deleted and if they specifically require me then it will need to be resent for my return. It would take a week to go through two weeks of emails and generally it would be too late to help.

Yes, this is standard practice in my org, we're advised to do this.
We get so many business updates, project updates and noise in inbox, direct email gets totally lost.

But I think it's a sector by sector thing. Depends on your org and it's style.

It's also a time management technique that is taught quite often!

I don’t understand. If I’m off and senders get an out of office from me, the email still arrives and I can still see it on my return. I thought that’s how these things always worked? Why would someone need to resend it? So it doesn’t get missed in the pile of unread emails when you return cos it’s nearer the top of the pile? My out of office advises who to contact in my absence in the case of emergency. There’s no request for an email to be resent!

I think it’s very easy to say that, if you don’t get many emails. I average easily 500 a day. Last time I took two weeks off, I came back to 4.5K emails.

No way am I reading them all when I come back and no way am I searching for the relevant emails, if only because I have actual work to do and reading emails that are no longer relevant isn’t at the top of my list. They get mass moved into a separate folder, I read my handover note where one of my Deputy’s gives me a heads up on anything I need to action and I’ll search for those emails, and anything else never gets read.

If your email is urgent, it’ll be actioned in that persons absence by using the OOO provided or going to an alternative contact in their team…

So I disagree that ‘clearing piled up emails’ is one of those things.

I think it’s quite smart . You can schedule an email to send if it can wait until they are back otherwise you will contact the out of office contact and it will be dealt with.

nicer to come back to relevant issues . Although not sure I will use it as it might look cheeky .

No. People need to go through their inbox when they return and deal with things. No one needs to fuss with remembering to send a message or even scheduling a message.

now, our outlook does pop up that the person is out before we hit send. That can be useful. If you know the person wont reply in a timely fashion, sometimes you go ask someone else the question.

We have points of contact listed on out of office message, with the message to contact the appropriate point of contact in your period of absence, and noting that nothing received by the recipient in this period will be read or actioned.

I have a colleague who for months had a OOO reply on all the time even when not on leave which said "I am prioritising my mental health and do not read my emails".

AFAIK nobody ever said anything to him!😂

I usually put I am not back until…..if urgent email….otherwise I will deal with your request in my return.

I wouldn’t be allowed but would love to. Just turn up after holiday, delete the 500 plus e-mails and crack on with my job.

I conduct public assistance appeal hearings. Part of my state's laws say that the agency that completed the action that's being appealed has to provide documentation to support the action three business days prior to the hearing date.

On Friday I didn't have the documentation that I needed for a hearing that was on Monday so I emailed the contact person and asked if they could send it to me as soon as possible so I could review it. I got an out-of-office email that just said "I'm out of the office please send any inquiries to this other person."

Both of these people are outside my organization and the other person's email address was not included in the email. 🤷‍♀️ I always include a phone number and an email address for someone that you can reach if you can't reach me on my out of office.

The norm where I worked. Saved having thousands of emails to plow through on my return. Just send it again with a scheduled time.

Yes acceptable. Just schedule the email to go on that date

At my old place of work - fast paced pressurised City environment - there was an unwritten expectation that you would periodically check their emails while away. To the extent that some OOO messages even gave contact details.

However a senior director of one key division bucked the trend with a heroic OOO message: 'I am out of the office until xxx - emails sent during this period will be deleted on my return, unread'. I do think though that you have to be pretty senior to take this radical approach. He was a legend in my view

can you not just schedule the resend for an appropraite date?

Definitely unacceptable in my work place. To be honest if I got that I’d think f right off!

The reality is that I am being paid on my first day back, and my employer is not getting their money's worth if I spend my first day reading 3000 emails.

This - i have too much actual work to do to handle this much pile up. I often send a note round my team/other key stakeholders telling them when I'm due out of office and who to contact in my absence if its urgent, otherwise to please wait til I'm back. I am entitled to take a holiday from work.

I do go through emails when I come back from leave - but I can easy get 50 emails a day, many of which are useless and unnecessary at the time never mind 2 weeks later. So I don't open them all, I look at who the sender/title is and make a decision about whether to look at it or not and ignore the rest. I guess there's a small danger of missing something I should have replied to but that's maybe happened once or twice in 10 years.

Where I work you can see that someone has an out of office reply on and what it says before you send the email. I assume it's the same everywhere if using Outlook?

I increasingly don't go through the email build up after a holiday. There are thousands. Many of them i didnt need to be copied on, or i find its already been dealt with. People tend to follow up if its actually important.

We send and copy on too many emails. Its a horrendous waste of time. Some of the least productive members of my team are the ones busily sending lots of long emails

The emails during the holiday can be deleted easily leaving just the things that arrive afterwards

My out of office reply gives my return date and also who to contact if it's urgent

I don't really understand how that would work because in order for the sender to get your out of office reply, wouldn't they have to send an email first? So basically you risk doubling your emails. They send it once, get the reply, they send it again using schedule send - voila twice the emails.

A shared spreadsheet would achieve that, and save anyone having to collate the answers.

That's what the form feeds into...
And we got an email asking us to complete it.

The same thread almost word for word was posted not so long ago and I was really surprised by how many posters thought it was a good idea and they did the same as I've never come across it and I'm not sure my employer would be happy for us to reply like that