Should I send a mat leave announcement?

[Lydia55y]

I'm due to break up for mat leave next week. I work in a large company, corporate environment, and liaise with colleagues across the country in various teams. As my role is project based I may not work with some teams for several months and so not everyone will know i'm going off.

I've worked here for nearly 9 years so have built good working relationships. Would it be really twee to send a round robin 'bye for now' email? I'm potentially taking a whole year off and I know a lot can happen in that time, some of the people I currently work with might move on etc...but equally people might just not care!

Has anyone done this before and if so how did you word it? I'll obviously have an out of office on too.

Yes I think you should.
Just keep it really simple and factual. ''I will be out of the office on maternity leave until xx/xx. IN the meantime so and so will be able to assist you'' etc

ps, i do see your fear about coming across twee but I bet no man would wonder if he sounded twee. I think it is better to avoid the ''mystery'' of disappearing without explanation, be your own horse's mouth!! ha ha .

Personally I wouldn't. Put a nice note on your out of office instead. It may come across a bit goady, as in yaaay for a year off (even though it's bloody hard work!) and you never know who is struggling with infertility who could be upset by your message.

I'd just put my out of office on, with a note about being on maternity leave.

I've never worked anywhere where a maternity round robin has been sent. Not have emails been sent when people go on sabbaticals, or long term sick, etc. It'd be odd here.

If you've received some from your work and they are more commonplace there; it'd be less weird. If you haven't, I'd just go with a nice OOO.

I'd say yes. It's a little rude to just disappear. Just be very factual and informative.

I would. It would be different if you only dealt with people in your own office but when you deal with people across the country I think it would be strange not to.
It also means you can let them know who's covering for you

Can you do a suitable out of office reply for a bit then take it off after a certain time because 12 months of getting that when using a distribution list would annoy me 😂. "I am away on mat leave for the foreseeable future, please contact X y z in the meantime and I look forward to getting back in touch when I return' or something vague and inoffensive like that?

In the meantime I'd just mention to anyone that contacts you between now and your leave, on the basis these are the people most likely to need to know about alternative arrangements.

In my workplace an announcement will be sent out by my director to tell people who my replacement will be once they are appointed.

e.g "Megan2018 will be on maternity leave from xxx-xxx. Joe Bloggs will be covering the role of xxxx for this period. I am sure you will all make Joe feel welcome blah blah blah"

and then my out of office will read something like
"I am on mat leave until xxx and my emails will not be read. Joe Bloggs is interim xxxx. Please contact Joe on xxxxx"

I didnt send one because my manager/ head of hr (small company) emailed everyone to confirm I would be starting mat leave and these are the details of my replacement. Whats the plan to cover you?

Meant to say - our email gets disabled though after 6 weeks so we automatically get removed from lists etc and you don't come back to eleventy billion emails. It gets reactivated once back so the out of office message doesn't stay all year.

Add a line on your signature stating you’ll be on mat leave from blah and in your absence contact x y z- something to this affect

I would to those who are not based at your location. I think it is only polite and part of a controlled handover.

I would like to inform you that as of X I will be on maternity leave. I expect to return in April 2020. In the mean time, users of Y should contact A and users of Z should contact B, any other queries should go to C for now.
Kind regards

I made sure to contact the people who I was likely to hear from individual in the months leading up to my Mat Leave to put in place any handover plans etc and just put on an out of office for anyone else who may have sporadically contacted me - "I am currently away from the business on Maternity Leave and anticipate to be returning in XXX (eg. April 2020) please contact XXX for any queries in my absence"

As it happens my line manager sent a round robin along the lines of "As many of you will already know XX will be starting her Maternity Leave on xxx. I am sure will all join me in wishing XX the very best for the sage arrival of her child. In XX's absence please contact xxxx for any queries etc" triggering 50+ emails on my last day wishing me good luck/providing terrifying birth stories!

Congratulations on your pregnancy. I would send a quick email. I work in HR and it is generally good practice to let your colleagues know when you would be away so they don't bombard you with email/calls. It is the same practice when going on maternity leave.

I didn’t and just did an out of office message on my Outlook. I wouldn’t think it was twee if I got one though. It’s tricky at work, I know, as you don’t want to sound too ‘touchy feely’ if that’s the right expression.

Yes, because of the relationships you have built.

I work on projects and as part of the handover period before I departed on Mat Leave was to inform the rest of my teams that I would be heading off on xx/xx and who would be taking over my responsibilities for each project. It wasn't done via one "send all" email but instead would crop up in conversation regarding meetings or deadlines / timelines etc.

Yes, I think mine was more like @twittlebee; not one announcement, it just cropped up here and there. I didn’t work on projects but I did work with people across a number of offices, so they wouldn’t know I was pregnant if I didn’t tell them iyswim.

It's always an eye opener on here how many odd attitudes there are to work, people wanting to be formal etc. I can't imagine wanting to be all formal and robotic at work. Just be normal, have the confidence to be yourself.

I say of course, just send an email letting people know where you're disappearing to for a year. It's a nice thing, people will probably want to say good luck. The poster who said it's goady, how ludicrous! Massive over thinking. And for people suffering infertility well that's very sad but not your fault and no reason for you to be secretive about being lucky enough to be pregnant.

I emailed anyone internal that I work with regularly about six weeks beforehand, I'm a specialist so if they wanted anything doing before I went off they had a bit of time to let me know! Anyone external gets my OOO, but it directs them to my maternity cover.

MotherofDinosaurs

It's always an eye opener on here how many odd attitudes there are to work, people wanting to be formal etc. I can't imagine wanting to be all formal and robotic at work. Just be normal, have the confidence to be yourself.

Maybe it’s more to do with the places you have worked compared to others? I know in some offices I’d say yeah of course, but some industries and some offices no. We all have different experiences and it’s impossible to say “you should...”. Just be yourself, have confidence to be yourself... yeeees, but obviously within reason. You wouldn’t crack jokes with your line manager the way you would with your best mate for example.

It doesn’t mean you aren’t “being yourself” if you adjust and adapt depending on where you work. It means you’re professional.

This would be weird in my industry/office (large/corporate).

I've never seen one like it.

Just tell key people individually (not a blanket email) then put on a helpful out of office directing people to an alternative contact...

It's the rule in our office to send round an email even if we're just taking a days holiday! But we don't have teams and it's a very flexible hierarchy so I could end up being wanted by someone I've never worked with directly before, hence the need to send office-wide emails to let people know where you are.

So if you were in my office I'd say do it, but you probably just want to do what the normal procedure is at yours.

I definitely would, just a nice breezy email to let them know!

I wouldn't, it sounds a bit like attention seeking and I've never seen a similar email in any of the companies I've worked for

I'd just put it on my out-of-office notification - that's what people do where I work (big company)