Any managers here? Work advice re email etiquette needed please!

[FrostyChocolateMilkshake]

Hoping someone might be able to give me a bit of advice before I email my manager tomorrow. This may be a bit waffly, I apologise in advance.

I have been on annual leave today. We have an assistant (still in the throes of training) who can cover certain aspects of my job whilst I'm not there but understandably not all of it.

Anyway she rang me in a bit of a tizz today, basically one of our Project Managers sent us an email at 6pm last night - I'd finished at 5pm as per my contract, and my assistant had finished at 4.30. My assistant didn't see this email until today.

Anyway turns out the request on this email was urgent and needed to be actioned today. My assistant wasn't able to do this herself (not her fault) so had to let them know it would get done when I'm back in the office. Which is fine.

But what annoys me is that the Project Manager who sent the request had received an email off the Site Manager at 2.30 yesterday afternoon (basically the Site Manager had emailed the Project Manager at 2.30pm with a request). If he had simply forwarded it on to me at 3pm yesterday I could have actioned most of it then left instructions for my assistant to continue with it in my absence. If that makes sense?

My AIBU is - am I within my rights to raise this with my line manager tomorrow? To say that the team need to be more organised and not leave it to the last minute, then kick off when it isn't done? From what my assistant has told me today it looks as though we are in the bad books because the Project Manager forgot to forward an email early enough.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Hope this all makes sense!

Looks like a very easily explainable situation, it isn’t something I would start an email debate about. If anybody mentioned it simply reply the request came in late.

Are you certain the person read the email at that time? Just because it was sent at x time doesn't mean it was received/read at that time?

@Runkle

Are you certain the person read the email at that time? Just because it was sent at x time doesn't mean it was received/read at that time?

Maybe, I'm not sure. But the man in question has got a habit of routinely doing this sort of thing.

Defo speak to your boss and give them the heads up about the email from 2.30 not being forwarded timeously.

Is there someone else who can deal with stuff in your absence, perhaps your boss, while the new person is still learning their role?

If so I would put on your out of office reply saying you’re “out of office on xx date, returning at 9am on xx date. My emails are not read in my absence. If your enquiry is urgent please contact my line manager joe bloggs on (give email or mobile) thank you”.

That way if you are off again and anything like this happens again, the person will know his email isn’t going to be actioned and can phone your boss instead. So you’ve done everything you can to communicate clearly that you are not there.

In the meantime you didn’t do anything wrong and neither did your colleague.

Thanks @Elieza I'll take that on board in future instances of me not being in the office

@LordEmsworth

You are overthinking it. You're entitled to take annual leave, and sending emails after hours shouldn't result in an expectation that the task will be done outside of working hours. I'd be emailing them directly saying, sorry I was unable to do this yesterday due to annual leave, for future urgent requests I suggest you provide as much notice as possible.

If you want a conversation with your manager then I'd frame it as "how can we ensure there's support to allow me to take annual leave", because if you're the only person who can do an essential task then there's a massive risk there.

This is great advice.

Your junior person should have know who to escalate this to in your absence. You would expect that person would have either dealt with it or said 'calm down, frosty will sort it when she's back tomorrow.....and dont leave it so late next time"
Not really ok to leave your junior to take tbe flack on the day.

And don't use the words sorry i was on annual leave in your response, you've nothing to be sorry for

@WTF99 the assistant has been here since December. She knows who to escalate problems to.
I guess in this instance she didn't deem it critical enough to escalate to management.

I personally wouldn't do anything until my boss mentioned it or came to me for information on what happened. Then I'd simply point out "They emailed at 6pm, I had left and had already arranged to take the next day off." If your manager has a problem with his team not being able to provide a next day service, he needs to resource and train appropriately. It's his problem, not yours.

This is a storm in a teacup surely. You were off so couldn’t action. If anyone wants to be a knob about it then they’ll just make themselves look silly.

The only thing I’d do would be to let your assistant know they are to contact your manager in your absence.

[quote FrostyChocolateMilkshake]@WTF99 the assistant has been here since December. She knows who to escalate problems to.
I guess in this instance she didn't deem it critical enough to escalate to management.[/quote]
She didnt get that quite right then I guess. Maybe have your manager on your out of office then in that case. I always have my direct report on my OOO, but I'm confident that they would escalate if needed, and they know which senior person is covering my leave if they need to talk to someone.
Having to deal with someone who us bring an arse, as in this case, is sufficient grounds for a junior person to escalate imo

....is being...

On most jobs I’ve run it’s perfectly ok for a project manager to take 2-3hrs to process an email. I wouldn’t go in with criticising that. Does the pm not have meetings or site visits? Surely he’s not sitting at his inbox all afternoon just waiting to need to forward an email?
The issue (if there is one) is people getting angry if you take one day off. Either your assistant needs trained up to fully cover for you or a colleague covers (or your manager). That’s what you need to discuss with your manager.

“Can't you have that conversation with the PM directly?“
I think Boris has enough on his plate without this tbh.

It all sounds very much like a storm in a teacup.

I wouldn’t worry and if there are repercussions then @EggysMom response is good.

They should have copied you in, whether your out of office was on or not.

Everyone's 'within their rights' to raise anything...but ime it's likely to reflect badly on you, especially since this is such a non issue (for you). Creating drama by reporting things is never viewed favourably.

Firstly, address with your assistant what actions she should take if the same happened again - should she reply, should she forward to someone else?

Secondly when you're back just reply to the email, ensuring anyone in the original chain is copied in, apologising you weren't able to help as you were on annual leave for the day and stating how to avoid a missed deadline in future (ie email to x in my absence or please ensure all requests are received by 4pm for same day completion etc).

My old workplace, our working hours had to be stated in our email addresses. Then everyone knew the sort of time table when things had to reach us to get actioned by possible deadlines. Also that they would have to find alternative methods if something was super urgent before someone was back at their desk. And of course we had Out-of-Office notices if away in usual working hours.

Just thinking it's easy enough to add one's usual working hours to email signature to facilitate timely responses.

Doesn’t this just fall under “Your failure to plan does not constitute an emergency for which I’m responsible”?

If it was an urgent request that was impossible to predict would occur then it’s just one of those unfortunate things - you were not working, someone else needed to deal with it, you assistant dealt with it as soon as she saw it.

If an email is sent at 6pm, it won’t happen til the following day, obviously.

There shouldn’t be angry emails from anyone on this score. I’d deal with that not any perceived delay in forwarding emails. If they didn’t send the email til post 6pm it won’t get read until 9am the next day and the natural consequence was a delay in outcome. Any angry emailing from them over delays is the unprofessional behaviour, not you being on annual leave or your assistant being trained.

Deal with the issue your assistant is dealing with - angry emails that are not warranted- not your frustrations with the bloke’s process. Someone else can join that dot for him.

I am a manger and when people behave like dicks like this my passive aggressive side comes out.

As soon as you get in in morning send an email saying

thank you for your email received as 6pm on Tuesday, unfortunately I had already left for the day, and have been in annual leave yesterday. Please note my contracted hours are x am to xpm, however I will give this my urgent attention this morning.

Kind regards
OP

I would waste my managers time with something like this or if I felt warranted it I'd bcc her in or if the project manager had really got my hackles up I'd cc her in

Did you have an out of office on. I always have one that says
Thank you for your email

Please note I am on annual leave until xyz date with no access to email.
If your email is urgent please forward it to
My manager @ company.com who will do their best to assist.
I will prioritise all emails upon my return.

None of this is your fault or your assistant’s. I think Teen’s email suggestion upthread is a bit too grovelling -“ would you” , “possibly”, “please”. You can be polite without having to be overly grovelling, acting as if it’s your fault in the first place.

@Elieza

Defo speak to your boss and give them the heads up about the email from 2.30 not being forwarded timeously.

Is there someone else who can deal with stuff in your absence, perhaps your boss, while the new person is still learning their role?

If so I would put on your out of office reply saying you’re “out of office on xx date, returning at 9am on xx date. My emails are not read in my absence. If your enquiry is urgent please contact my line manager joe bloggs on (give email or mobile) thank you”.

That way if you are off again and anything like this happens again, the person will know his email isn’t going to be actioned and can phone your boss instead. So you’ve done everything you can to communicate clearly that you are not there.

In the meantime you didn’t do anything wrong and neither did your colleague.

Agree with this. Our office convention is that only the CEO or I can call other staff in from leave - we set the threshold for an emergency. I'm on call myself for an issue tonight, and he has my personal number - I don't keep my work phone on me.

Also, your assistant might just be feeling the pressure. I was seriously swamped the other day, and our landlord similarly fucked up - didn't give us sufficient notice to be let into our office during lockdown and asked us to send someone in.

I laughed it off as their fuck up, but unfortunately the message got through to a junior member of the team when I was in a meeting. She panicked and jumped to their demands.

I've taught her - "your failure to prepare does not constitute my emergency". In your case, I'd suggest she refers them to your manager.

To be honest, I don’t think it’s worth worrying about.

Your PM doesn’t necessarily check emails constantly (I work in construction and certainly don’t check them constantly), so it’s not unreasonable for them not to forward it immediately. If it was that urgent, the Site Manager should have called to follow up and potentially called other members of the Team for action if the PM was AWOL. There’s always another source for an answer.

Some things drop through the net, this one did. If your auto reply was on and gave details of a contact then your arse is covered.

And thinking of the ‘urgent’ things that come across my desk, a day won’t make a blind bit of difference 😅