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

Worked in Local Govt, colleagues never picked up other work as own caseload too big. Admin not interested in helping, and friendly with management, so if I was on leave, the out of office email not only had to warn sender not to expect an answer until I was back, but also that no one else would answer either…

the joy of a couple of hundred emails on my return (including the cake in the tearoom ones!) Also, the joy of 20 people thinking I’d sorted their email request by 9.30 am on my first day back…

I've never seen it in my career of 30 odd years. I current work at a large global software company and have still never it.

But last time there was a thread about this, lots of people seemed to say it was the norm now.

I can see why it’s convenient for person receiving the EMails. If the matter is in any way time sensitive it might have been resolved by the time they return to work.
I can also see why it seems brusque and unreasonable to the sender.
Maybe a compromise is to have the out of office message saying something like they will deal with the matter on their return but will just send a quick EMail asking the sender to confirm that it still needs attention.

This was acceptable in my previous job and I only ever did it if it was for something that would benefit me/get my work done. 🙈 if I was doing the OOO colleague a favour or courtesy, and I received a ‘please resend on X date’, I just ignored it. It’s their work not mine, they can follow up if it’s important.

That would be so annoying. Would end up with loads of things I had to remember whereas if it's sent they can just look at it when they have a chance after their return.

I do this.

It hugely speeds up working through the email backlog when returning from holiday.

It also highlights how the vast majority of work emails I receive are completely pointless.

This makes no sense. If someone (a client or whatever) is OOO and you don't know that beforehand (which one likely wouldn't) what's the trigger to NOT send the email?

It's not up to you to organise someone else's inbox because they can't be arsed to scan through them with they return and work out what needs doing vs what has already been dealt with.
What do these people do about important updates that land in their inbox whilst they're off?

If I sending an email to 25 people, I want to send it once, to all of them. Not note that Debbie returns 25th, Tom returns 28th etc. Because they won't be the only group I'm emailing so I also need to know that June from the other group also returns on 25th etc.

In our place you see the ooo as you type the email address in so if I see Jane is on holiday until after completion of this activity, I can omit her from the cc list. But I'm not resending it. Life's too short to pander to that kind of nonsense.

They’d be told to take it off at the place I work for, it would be a faff. It’s expected to just be going through your emails on the first day back, not having people resend everything

does one not have a fiduciary responsibility to action what needs to be actioned? It's a pain but everyone any place ive work know that (and it's a pain) depending on how long you were off, you will need to clear your inbox. Generally, in my experience loads are generic, automatic, or all staff emails that are easily identified and can be deleted. Anything sent to you and you alone needs to be reviewed. I guess it depends on the industry, i'm guessing if one is working in a biscuit factory this would likely not be an issue....

"knowledge" i think you mean hope? The customer is always right my bosses over the decades would be horrified/rightfully pissed off were a client to receive such a passive aggressive OOO

In my workplace, we're supposed to say something like 'I'm out of the office until XX May. If your message needs a response before then, please contact...'

Sometimes, people will say 'I'll pick up my emails when I return on XX May, but it might take me longer than that to reply to everything, so if your message is urgent please contact...'

But nobody just says 'I'm on holiday, so fuck you' which is essentially how I would interpret 'Please resend your message in a fortnight's time'.

A generic internal email is not the same as a client/vendor email, and 'sadly' you'll need to check which is which (if one is in receipt of the latter), or you're not doing your job...

It makes sense if the issue has already been redirected, no need to double check every request is still outstanding.

We're actually required to ask people to do that now in my workplace, but the protocol is to say "I'm OOO until x date, please resend this email to y if it needs attention before then, otherwise please resend it to me on my return to the office". It's made everything so much more efficient, urgent stuff gets dealt with in a timely manner, and people who can wait just wait until you're back.

That sounds eminently more reasonable than the OP scenario, still not how i would do it....

Excuse me ignorance… how do you do that? In outlook? Would be so useful.

Presumably the person has such a "non job" that they never receive correspondence from other business computers (like banks) with important attachments etc.

One of my colleagues OOO is "Find someone else" 😂 always cracks me up.

Imagine being able to just delete all the email that arrived while you were away. Pretend it never existed.. That's madness TBH, what if it was something important.

If I got that bounce back I'd do as everyone else is saying and immediately resend it on a delayed send though.

I said that it would be acceptable in my old workplace -and was surprised at how the poll is going

so it made me think - my workplace was full of various ND and people were therefore encouraged just to be clear about what helps us all be most effective.

not every project had back up quite often people would have to wait for support , but poeple who wait sometimes find their own solutions so for some people saying “get back to me when I’m back if you still need this” was by far the best. They could then junk all incoming mail and have a clear start when they got back from holiday.

we would all share the tricks we used to make our lives better and help us work to our best - not everyone did the same thing but it all seemed to work really well.

It’s not uncommon. Personally I think it’s a good idea as it stops the interminable wading through billions of emails after a holiday and instead you just get the ones which are still necessary. Quite a few times I’ve responded to stuff in my inbox only to find that the matter has moved on or they’ve asked someone else.

I do this. But phrase it ask to consider sending on my return. But I always add in the main team email asking to send it to that address if urgent. I don’t get angry if someone sends me an email when I am off. But I do find I come back with less emails and can start to answer them when they arrive.

I can go away for a week and come back to 300 emails. Non of it that urgent. Takes me days to get through. My organisation is very email heavy

however on my last 2 week holiday I had many angry emails asking why I had t replied to a non urgent email despite out of office on. Suppose only works if the person reads it!

Not sure how you conclude "it cuts down e-mail traffic".

If I've sent you an e-mail, then that would be it, done the normal way. An automated OoO comes back so I know you're away, then within a couple of days of your return you will be able to read it and complete any actions.

With this rather presumptuous demand, There is the original e-mail, the OoO, then if I were to send it again (I mean, I wouldn't but....) then you get MORE e-mail traffic, not less.

An OoO should state when you are returning and who to contact if it needs a more urgent response.