Would this be acceptable in your workplace?

[olderbutwiser]

I’ve started to receive out of office emails saying “I am out of office until xxx. Please resend your email after that date”.

I may be a dinosaur, but to me it’s unacceptable to put the onus on the sender to resend their email on some random future date. Clearing piled-up emails when I get back to the office is just one of those things you have to factor into your working life.

Votes please:

Perfectly acceptable nowadays, you’re a dinosaur —> You Are Being Unreasonable
It’s completely unacceptable, time for a Meeting Without Coffee —> You Are Not Being Unreasonable

Can’t you just send it to be delivered after the return date?

That’s strange! I’ve never seen that and I don’t think my work would encourage it.

Unacceptable in mine. I'd also be expected to have someone to send anything to if it is something that should not wait.

We have a handover process for holidays, I have five people who do certain things in my absence.

Just resend it right away but schedule it to arrive after the date.

So upon receipt of an out of office notification, the sender, is to take a note of the recipients return date and schedule to resend upon recipients return to office.

It would be completely laughed at and ignored where I work.

This comes up periodically on the boards and feedback is surprisingly mixed. Never been acceptable anywhere I have worked and I would not accept one lf my team doing this.

Of course if off long term eg mat leave saying it won’t be monitored, please forward to X is completely different.

nothing worse than coming back to an inbox of several thousand emails, many of which may have been dealt with already and the sender doesn’t tell you it is no longer necessary to do.

I delete everything and if you still need it then you can follow up

Very common practise in alot of workplaces.

I think it’s fine and a very good idea. The recipient can delete everything that came in while they were off, in the knowledge anything important will be resent for their return.

I can't think of a surer way to drive an enquiry away.

So if you are public sector and not reliant on making a profit to earn your pay, then it is ill mannered but not a disaster.

If you are a commercial organisation, it is tantamount to signing your own redundancy notice.

I think it would be okay in an internal e-mail where colleagues can see the out of office reply before they hit send - that way they can just not send it. I'd want a different version to external recipients though.

It's wild as it assumes people are supposed to be making notes of everyone's leaves and remembering to send stuff when they're back. I do get it can be overwhelming when you're back from leave and have a mountain of emails (many of which can be deleted), but depending on your role if its email heavy it's not reasonable.

It wouldn't be acceptable where I work.

The trick to avoid wasting time on things that have been resolved while you were away is to read your inbox from the top down (so start with the most recent email, not the oldest).

The only time I have come across it is with one of DC's consultants who is out on sabbatical for several months.

The OOO is along the lines of "I am currently out of the office until 01-09-25. I will not be going through any emails received between 01-05-25 and 31-08-25 upon my return so please resend your message to [email protected] or [email protected] if you need assistance. Alternatively resend directly to me, after my return date"

At work, most of my correspondence with clients is done over email and I have never seen this on anyone's OOO, I don't like it at all.

Not in my workplace (medical). We have to specify the days we are off and who is responsible for our emails while we are off, otherwise it would be chaos.
Normally the person on triage will sort it out.

I think it’s okay because of the pace of change nowadays. Most requests in my work would be redundant or at least very out of date by a week later.

Spending two days sifting though and chasing people up to find out if it’s still relevant wastes their time and yours.

It's absolutely ridiculous, but last time someone started a thread about this issue, the majority of posters said they thought it was fine. The onus is on the email recipient to look through emails and decide what still needs to be actioned. Crazy to think the sender is under any obligation to re-send.

Never heard of it but I think it is a good idea.

An out of office reply, is fine, but not an instruction to resend, they already have the email.

You can write an email then schedule a date for it to send.

I don’t think it would be seen an unacceptable. But I’ve never seen it said.

I don’t think it’s wildly unreasonable. Sometimes people send an email not know the person is on leave, then they find someone else to help with whatever the email is about, so by the time the person comes back it’s all resolved but they don’t know that when they read the email.

My work isn't particularly time sensitive in that it can wait a week or two. My OOO gives my return date and advises it will be dealt with then.

Completely unacceptable for anyone on annual leave.
If they are on sick leave, or if they are so busy and important that they can't read through emails when they get back, then a redirect should be set up for someone to receive their emails in their absence.

i think it's a good idea and it cuts down email traffic.
Most people's email systems can have emails sent on a particular date/time. Just do that.