What does your work email OOO say?

[YawnyMcdawny]

If you have a job that requires you to put an email Out Of Office reply on, what do you put?

I recently put something like 'I am on annual leave with no access to my emails and will respond when I return on date. If query is urgent please contact person x'

Some of my colleagues write 'leave me a message on my mobile and I will respond'.

I'm thinking it's annual leave and I am on holiday. The world won't fall apart if I don't answer, and neither will my colleagues btw.

Our general manager works whilst she's on holiday, replies to emails and messages very quickly within a few hours usually. it doesn't set a great example for the rest of the company who actually want to switch off. She gets a bit sarky if someone puts a proper ooo message and then doesn't actually check their emails whilst they are off.

AIBU to think I should be able to take time off without having to work?

what do you put as your ooo and do you respond to emails whilst away? If so why? If you're being honest, what would happen if you delegated your work to someone else?

Obviously if you run your own business or are self employed I know this will sit differently! I'm talking about being employed by a company where you get paid holidays.

Mine states same as yours. Annual leave as an employees is just that - leave away from work, which you are legally entitled to.

Yeh similar to yours

Thank you for your e-mail. I am currently out of the office until (x date) and have no access to my e-mail.

Should your enquiry be urgent please contact [email protected] or call 01234 567890.

I did see one that said ‘…on my return I will be deleting all receive mail, so if this is urgent please contact me again on my return!’

I'd never give my mobile number. It's my holiday!

"I'm out of the office until 14 August. Please contact John Smith or Jane Jones in my absence".

Mine is similar to yours. If we are dealing with something particularly high profile/difficult I sometimes check my emails while I'm off but i try not to. My teams have my personal mobile number so can get in touch if there's something urgent enough to need it, but that's rare. The way I look at it, if I'm doing my job properly, the team should be able to cope without me for a few days (and they can!)

Mine is the same as yours.

My head of department always puts that he’s contactable by mobile including when he was on paternity leave and was actually taking calls from the hospital. Absolute madness 🫣

Words to the effect of I'm out of the office until blah date and will respond on my return.

Once I'm on leave, the laptop is closed down and not reopened until I return....and the CF who approached me on LinkedIn got told the same thing 🙄

I'm an academic. Mine says I'm on leave and will respond as soon as I can after I return on xxx date. I don't even say "I have no access to email" it should be a given that if I'm on leave I do not read email.

It says I'm on leave and will respond on my return but if they require a more urgent response to redirect their email to x, y or z depending on the project.

No way would I be responding to emails when I'm on leave. My company have just banned taking phones out of the country too.

My working hours are Monday and Thursday 9 to 5. Outside of these hours please email our joint mailbox [email protected] and one if the team will indeed help.

Mines the same. I’m the boss at work and think it’s sets a really poor example not to maintain those boundaries. And puts unnecessary pressure on others to work if you do! If you were ill they’d have to cope. Don’t ever feel guilty about taking time off. Your boss is in the wrong here! I had a boss like this once and tried to work the same way - I am older and wiser now and try to set a good example!!

Same as yours. "I am away until X date. If your query is urgent please contact Bob or Fred" where Bob and Fred are emy deputies. No phone contact details, just email. None of us really use phones since Teams came in.

Same as yours. If I'm offline but working (eg at an away day or conference) I might add my number for urgent queries, depending on what I might expect to come up - especially if nobody else is available.

At my work, the people senior enough that they might expect to be disturbed during leave are senior enough that someone else will monitor their inbox for them and make the call to get in touch if needed.

I think routinely working through leave is poor (and often counter-productive too).

Mine is similar albeit I don't put anyone's actual email address in it (hangover from my previous employer where this was was frowned upon because it meant scammers could get corporate emails). I normally just have a generic 'contact another member of the team'. That said, I do regularly check my emails and deal with easy stuff while I'm away or forward on anything that needs to be dealt with urgently. I hate coming home to a massive inbox and can relax more easily when I've spent 10 mins a day clearing it.

I love the idea of banning taking company phones abroad! That definitely wouldn't happen at my workplace.

Our big boss is a control freak (& micro manager) and would never step away from work. It's infuriating.

It depends. I set an internal one and an external one. Internal I offer three alternatives to speak to depending on what it's about, external I offer one alternative.

If I'm only off for a day or so I say on the internal one that they should only speak to the alternative person if it is URGENT otherwise they get dragged into stuff that can actually wait.

I just put ‘Hello, thank you for your email. I am out of the office and will respond to your message on xxxx, but if you need an urgent response please contact xxx’ I would never offer my phone number or any other means of contacting me if I’m on leave- I’m not paid enough for that!

Mine is similar - I am currently out of the office returning X date and will respond to your email on my return. If the matter is urgent, please contact my colleague on [email protected].

Other people's definition of urgent is sometimes very odd - when I am someone else's OOO contact I seem to get an awful lot of crap that could wait until they get back.

Mine currently says

I'm having a few days off and will be back on Wednesday.

If your message is urgent please contact xxxx

I'm the boss and encourage my colleagues to switch off when on leave which means logging out of teams, not checking emails, replying or sending emails.

If it’s an odd day I might put ‘limited access to email’, but increasingly I’m getting stressed at work so this week, for example, it says I have no access to
email and suggests a couple of people to try for certain questions. But the latter is only really because it’s a busy time and there is the odd thing that might need answering, so it’s more to stop me checking as I know someone else will be able to answer.

My immediate team know they can WhatsApp me with quick and urgent questions.

Surely it depends on your job?

How niche your role is and whether it can be done by anyone in the office?

Mine's roughly the same as yours but can also include something like "if your query is related to Project X, please contact person Y" if I'm off for more than a couple of days.

I also work part time so I have one that says "I am not working this afternoon. I will respond to your email on my return".

Unless you are paid stupid money to be available 24/7 annual leave should mean being switched off.

I am on leave until xxx and will reply to emails when I return. If your email is urgent please email [email protected] or [email protected]

I never use my work phone when on leave, the people names do have my personal mobile number and if it was something urgent that needed something specific from me they know they are welcome to call me themselves but that has never happened.

I hate it when an out of office doesn't give a return date unless it says something like 'long term leave' (I know people can have sickness etc with an unknown end) as it is hard to know if I should contact someone else or not if I know that my query really needs to be picked up within a week or something.