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?

Your annual leave is a legal requirement for you to not be working.

It's not a preference. It's a requirement in place to prevent burnout.

I work part time and I do check in on my non working days so I can keep abreast of any issues on the things I'm responsible for. I do that because it works better for me. I don't work, but I know what's happening and can refer it if needs be.

But my AL is time that I'm required to not be working. It is my mental and physical break from work. It is to stop burnout happening.

And burnout is a real thing. I've experienced it. Which is why I'm so vocal about taking the leaves you're supposed to be taking.

Do you take a laptop on holiday?

Your post smacks of these are my hours and it's not my job. A real "jobsworth" with no idea of what it is like being in a professional role as a partner in a firm. And as a partner I am actually being paid as my pay is the profit element thay the firm makes even in my absence.

As I said previously you do you and let others do them. Pretty certain I know which of us would be accused of lying about what we earn by those who don't believe women on MN can possibly earn that much.

Can still have as much fun and downtime whilst on leave by spending a simple 30 minutes to delegate as I said before. Meanwhile you sound stressed by just reading a MN post.

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

I knew a guy a while back, very senior within the company but no PA, and he did this. His view was that if someone wanted an answer badly enough, they'd email again

I sort mine by sender.

I go through and delete anything that looks to be non work related or obviously unimportant without reading it.

Then I have a quick look at anything I'm not sure about and give myself about 20 seconds to work out whether it's important or not. If it isn't, I delete it.

Then I go through what's left and make a to-do list of the things which do need to be actioned.

Over 200 emails usually after a week off.

I keep them but just leave them unread in case I need to search for them.
Not related to the topic but...
Once I came back from nearly a year's parental leave and found the new HR system had gone live the week before and the old was gone (I needed to check my payslips) then I found several emails over the last couple of months telling us we had to download all our payslips before the switch over!
Luckily I raised a ticket and they dug them out after a few months.

I'm senior and have a lot of responsibility. However, in my company (very large, well known firm) it is incredibly frowned upon to work during your leave, regardless of your position.

You say my post smacks of being a "jobs worth", when I'm simply advocating not working every day of your life. Your post smacks of "look how important I am, I can't possibly go a day without working". Try having a team you trust.

Many hundreds (a lot of them junk though). My out of office and calendar adds another day into my holiday so I can catch up on them before normal work commences. (Not actual holiday).

Deleting them is not good at all.

Possibly about 200-300, I delete half of them. I also come back to about 20 Teams messages because no matter that I have an Out of Office on people seem to think they're too important to wait until I get back and that I should respond to them (I've had chase up messages before). They get ignored. Even my boss doesn't message me when I'm on holiday and he is important and not just a member of the team (if it was truly important he'd WhatsApp me anyway).

So in my experience it isn't management that send emails or messages when someone is on leave, it's everyone else.

I also delete Teams and Outlook off my phone and iPad.

@IpsyUpsyDaisyDoos

Your annual leave is a legal requirement for you to not be working. It's not a preference. It's a requirement in place to prevent burnout.

Unless of course, you have small children under 5. In which case work is your time off and prevents parental burnout.

I do the same - sort by sender and then delete all the rubbish. Then work through the rest.

I also have one of those. I do a thing which my other parent friends can't believe.

I take a day off while they'd usually be at nursery and have time to myself. I do this a couple of times a year to stop myself feeling strung out. And I do no housework or anything.

Time away from both means I'm better at both my job (which is demanding) and being a mum (also demanding). And not being totally strung out all the time means DH and I have a better relationship.

Time for yourself is important.

@IpsyUpsyDaisyDoos

I take a day off while they'd usually be at nursery and have time to myself. I do this a couple of times a year to stop myself feeling strung out. And I do no housework or anything.

Yes I do this too! You need time alone without your children or work to stay sane

Around 300. I keep an eye on emails while on annual leave and forward stuff / respond to easy stuff. I much prefer being on top of emails and not having to come back to hundreds. That would give me way more anxiety.

I sort the messages by sender/header.

Can quickly delete spam/newsletters etc that way, and see whether a topic has been emailed about once vs a long thread I'm tagged in awaiting my response.

I just don't compute when it comes to people who read their emails the night before coming back. Sorting work emails is my job, not my hobby. It's nice having a quiet start to the week going through them all.

DH does this and it seems to work for him. TBH whenever I come back after being OOO most of its total crap but there’s usually the odd interesting one. My industry tends to really quieten down over summer and Christmas which is when I tend to take leave anyway.

Hear hear! When I was working as CSuite in Opps, I'd have thought I was doing a piss poor job running the place if I couldn't leave for a minute.

As it was, I actually had to leave suddenly on the grounds of ill health, and my team were bloody brilliant - handing over took half a day, because we ran a tight ship and had everything in good order.

People who think the place will fall apart without them/haven't got a good team don't realise how bad they have it.

I am lucky, as I work for a small company where we just don't send all-staff emails unless it is important.

In my previous job I would come back to hundreds of emails with updates on various initiatives, and the ramblings of important people. I could have easily deleted them all.

Now, i can be off for a fortnight and come back to just a handful, all of which are relervent to me.

Sometimes I don't bother to switch my phone alerts off, just so I'm not wondering whether there are any disasters waiting for me. That's a gamble though.

After a week I'll have about 30.

I get about 100-150 on a weekday and 30 on a weekend, so I’d come back to about a nearly a 1000 after a week off. I spend my first day back sorting them, I hate it! It’s also very hard to keep on top of them during my working day, amongst meetings / actually having to do work.

I came back after a week off at the beginning of June to 350+ emails. About half I’d just been cc’d into so I could file. Maybe 10% were junk I could delete. Some were part of long chains that someone else had dealt with while I was away so again I could file. I was left with maybe 50-70 that I actually had to deal with and it took me about a week to get back on top of things (ie deal with the backlog while also dealing with my day-to-day job).

I’d love to delete everything but I don’t have the kind of job where that’s possible.

Different jobs different approaches.

one job where the norm was I’d be copied into increasingly frantic desperate e mail chains, I’d happily delete when I got back, there’d be 100s after a week away. the place was a nightmare of uncontrolled idiocy (government) where I did my best to not put any of my thought in writing as I was sure there was multiple court cases looming. Constant crises.

left there for a job where I’d get fewer emails that would need dealt with on my return. So maybe 25 after a week that weren’t junk or hadn’t gone elsewhere after getting out of office.

now working somewhere structured with good support, rarely crisis mode. My boss will copy me in judiciously for FYI and will text if he actually needs my input. Which I don’t mind as it’s very rare, he’ll normally leave it till I’m back. It’s great.

300 or so a week, so taking 2 weeks off is fun. I filter the obvious pointless ones, delete ones I know aren't for my action but then work through them in groups by subject or sender to clear them. About 20% of them will be from people who haven't read my out of office, then chase me before realising I'm off.

Amount of emails I get varies. I usually work on the assumption that anything internal that's older than a couple of days has been dealt with and focus on external emails, those are more likely to be specific to my work and therefore to need my attention regardless of how long I've been away if my leave is planned.

What happens during unplanned leave is a big problem where I work, people seem to expect the person will reply when they get back whenever that is rather than looking for someone else to help like they do when people are on planned leave.