Work emails after holiday

[sanogo]

Just curious as to how many emails you would come back to at work after one week on holiday and what do you do about them?

Twice recently I've spoken to two people at work, they don't know each other and work in different buildings and both of them said separately to me that when they come back to work they just delete all of their emails

At first I thought they were joking but then I realised they weren't

The last time I took a week off I came back to seventy emails. The guy that I was talking to said he came back to a couple of hundred. The woman had been to Australia for 3-4 weeks and said she had over a thousand so deleted every single one

In a way it makes sense because it would take days if not longer to read and action them all. I guess if any were important they would chase you up?

After a weeks holiday 2/300
I would say 1/2 are probably junk or newsletters or sales pitches
I delete those first then yes I read the lot and highlight in different colours how urgently I need to respond to them
Best way for me is to block out the full morning on my first day back at work to read, plan and prioritise

I used to leave an out of office on to apologise for not responding straight away.

I usually came back to at least a couple hundred messages, usually from the public so I couldn’t really delete them. it was my job to reply.

Id quickly scan each one, prioritise it, pass it on to experts who could help me answer it. Over the next few days I’d slowly get through them all, or update the sender if more research was needed from subject experts.

I expected to be busy. Didn’t bother me at all. Loved my work.

I'd be terrified to delete them all. In my workplace people often send emails with meeting requests or info you need to read and retain for future reference.However, I'd be tempted to delete the ones with requests as they've either asked someone else in the meantime or if it's important they'll email again. Intereting topic, interested in what others say🤔

I get 100 emails a day. (I know this as I only work weds-fri so every Wednesday I turn up to 200+ unread messages). It's a nightmare. I find it so stressful that I'm not on top of things. Even worse if coming back from being away on holiday. I think the idea of binning them is a great one.

Usually about two hundred

I do have a colleague who states on her out of office that she will not be responding to emails sent during her leave and instead they should contact her on her return

After a week off I'd typically come back to 100-150.

I'd never just delete them all, but do have a simple method for reducing them, which is to organise them by subject line (rather than by date), and then delete all but the most recent email for each thread. The only exception would be earlier in emails in the chain which contain an attachment that I might need to refer back to, so I keep any emails with attachments too.

300 plus a week. I read them all, I don’t delete any. Some I will click on unread and file away until later, some can be skim read

When my out of office is on, I have a rule that everything delivers to a separate folder. So when I come back in, my inbox is clean and I can dip in to the folder and catch up - but the mess of unread emails is confined to that folder.

I get 250-300 emails in a week off.

My autoreply says ill get back to you as soon as I can when I return - if something is mega urgent, the person generally chases me at the end of my first day back. Anything I haven't read or actioned within a week of being back gets deleted.

I come in on a Monday to 2-300 emails so after a holiday it’s more like 2000 emails! I tend to sort by sender first and delete all the ones that are automated reminders (things like approvals), news letters and data reports that are now out of date, then sort by subject and remove any chains etc.

If I have had a request that feels no longer relevant or that data / meeting dates etc have now past or in the next few days. I do just delete and assume they have asked someone else after seeing my out of office.

If you’re using Outlook you can group by conversation which basically does this for you.

@TheCovidHalfStone yes I know that, which is what I do. However if I'm working and not on annual leave, I prefer to have things in date order.

It makes sense to delete them all after mat leave or being on long term sick bit not after being on leave for a week or two. I might have about 50/60 after a week off but a lot I can delete cos they're just emails about upcoming training, conferences, weekly news bulletin etc.... so can easily get rid of half quite quickly.

I do this too. I have a folder called 'Holiday week', everything goes into there while I'm away and then I get to it when I can.

I have an 'advance warning of leave' in my email signature for at least 6 weeks before my holiday and I have an out of office message explaining that I'm away, will not be reading emails while on leave and giving alternative points of contact.

I do not rush to respond to the emails when I get back because they should have been able to sort it out without me if it was urgent and if they've made an assumption that I'll be immediately jumping to their email the second I return to works then they're in for a disappointment.

I get somewhere around 100-150 emails a day, so 5 days off means 500- 750 emails to skim, triage and then work through.

I try to deal with mine on my phone when away - I forward the important ones to other people and if it's a one liner then I just do it myself, it's no bother.

My DH totally objects to my approach and opens a Holiday folder and shoves the whole lot into it when he gets back and deals with them whenever. He reckons if its that important they will email again.

I generally come back to a couple of hundred. My OOO informs the person sending the email who to contact if they need a response before I return.

Then I spend my first day back going through and clearing them.

I'm expecting to be told about redundancy next week so looking forward to no more work emails. (If, as expected I'm getting made redundant, I'll take that as a final push to finally retire.)

Use email rules. Not ones that you necessarily use when you're not on holiday, but ones designed to be run manually to push non-urgent routine emails to one side, and pull priority messages forward.

And remember to give yourself time for a cup of coffee to Unsubscribe from (or Block Sender) all the ones you're about to delete Unread. Coming back from holiday is a great time to spot the repeat spam that clogs up your inbox every week.

Anywhere between 50-70 depending on the time of year and whether my co-PM had also been away (unlikely!). We can get around 30-40 a day when we are in our busiest seasons of project delivery and away from our computers for most of the day.

A lot of these would be CCs and a few office-wide emails, too. I would have an OOO with my co-PM listed though I think most of my colleagues could have a stab at answering any Qs (small but widely-spread organisation).

After a weeks holiday I can come back to well over 200. I'm currently on 11 months Mat leave, so god only knows how many I'll get back to, despite my spending the last couple of months at work unsubscribing from everything I could, advising business partners I'd be off and having myself removed from email groups.

I have a colleague who leaves an out of office saying they are away and won't be looking at emails and to resend anything important after their return. They then delete all emails sent whilst they were away. I would love to have the personality to be able to do this as I hate the trawl through emails on return from holiday but I would be too anxious that I missed that one critical email.

I don't read anything if it's not directly sent to me. So if I'm copied on anything I don't read it at all, which pretty much applies if I'm in or out of the office. Any bulk internal emails I ignore.
After being off for a few days people catch up and traffic normally drops anyway.

Around 500ish.

A lot are related or conversations/chains with multiple replies. I usually block out half of my first day back to let me work through them. Love Outlook grouping of emails in conversations, if the last email in a chain looks like it is resolved in my absence and I am not too interested in the topic I just 🗑️ file the chain in one go.

My email is sent as to who to contact in my absence who will deal with the query. I therefore come back to minimal outstanding emails.

I used to come back to literally 1000’s of emails and could never catch up. I eventually left that job as I also never got to switch off as people would call/text etc even when off.

Been in my current role almost 2 years, we have a culture of total respect and strict communication guidelines in our team. I come back to 30-50 emails after a week and most will be future meeting invites or automated emails. My team are amazing at leaving each other alone when on holiday. Our comms rules also mean we only send an email if we absolutely need to, most of our comms are thru Teams and in channels so we can “pull” information rather than have it “pushed”
into our inbox.

I'm retired now but I used to have an automatic out of office response which included a list of people to contact for different queries while I was away.

On my return I'd send a standard reply to most emails that had piled up...... "please let me know whether this issue has been resolved, or do you still need my input".