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

The norm where I worked. Saved having thousands of emails to plow through on my return. Just send it again with a scheduled time.

I conduct public assistance appeal hearings. Part of my state's laws say that the agency that completed the action that's being appealed has to provide documentation to support the action three business days prior to the hearing date.

On Friday I didn't have the documentation that I needed for a hearing that was on Monday so I emailed the contact person and asked if they could send it to me as soon as possible so I could review it. I got an out-of-office email that just said "I'm out of the office please send any inquiries to this other person."

Both of these people are outside my organization and the other person's email address was not included in the email. 🤷‍♀️ I always include a phone number and an email address for someone that you can reach if you can't reach me on my out of office.

I wouldn’t be allowed but would love to. Just turn up after holiday, delete the 500 plus e-mails and crack on with my job.

I usually put I am not back until…..if urgent email….otherwise I will deal with your request in my return.

We have points of contact listed on out of office message, with the message to contact the appropriate point of contact in your period of absence, and noting that nothing received by the recipient in this period will be read or actioned.

I have a colleague who for months had a OOO reply on all the time even when not on leave which said "I am prioritising my mental health and do not read my emails".

AFAIK nobody ever said anything to him!😂

No. People need to go through their inbox when they return and deal with things. No one needs to fuss with remembering to send a message or even scheduling a message.

now, our outlook does pop up that the person is out before we hit send. That can be useful. If you know the person wont reply in a timely fashion, sometimes you go ask someone else the question.

I think it’s quite smart . You can schedule an email to send if it can wait until they are back otherwise you will contact the out of office contact and it will be dealt with.

nicer to come back to relevant issues . Although not sure I will use it as it might look cheeky .

I think it’s very easy to say that, if you don’t get many emails. I average easily 500 a day. Last time I took two weeks off, I came back to 4.5K emails.

No way am I reading them all when I come back and no way am I searching for the relevant emails, if only because I have actual work to do and reading emails that are no longer relevant isn’t at the top of my list. They get mass moved into a separate folder, I read my handover note where one of my Deputy’s gives me a heads up on anything I need to action and I’ll search for those emails, and anything else never gets read.

If your email is urgent, it’ll be actioned in that persons absence by using the OOO provided or going to an alternative contact in their team…

So I disagree that ‘clearing piled up emails’ is one of those things.

I don’t understand. If I’m off and senders get an out of office from me, the email still arrives and I can still see it on my return. I thought that’s how these things always worked? Why would someone need to resend it? So it doesn’t get missed in the pile of unread emails when you return cos it’s nearer the top of the pile? My out of office advises who to contact in my absence in the case of emergency. There’s no request for an email to be resent!

Yes, this is standard practice in my org, we're advised to do this.
We get so many business updates, project updates and noise in inbox, direct email gets totally lost.

But I think it's a sector by sector thing. Depends on your org and it's style.

It's also a time management technique that is taught quite often!

I work in an industry where usually an email means the sender requires an immediate or urgent response. Often I can get several hundred emails a day. My out of office will always direct people to other help points, my phone will be on divert to a colleague and it will say that all emails will be deleted and if they specifically require me then it will need to be resent for my return. It would take a week to go through two weeks of emails and generally it would be too late to help.

I voted YANBU.

I had a customer ask me once to not email him whilst he was on leave. The issue was he was copied into, and was the main contact for literally everything, so he'd get daily reports, automated worksheets from our system etc. I did it once but as soon as he came back I said he'd have to make other provisions next time because it was a massive pain!

It's up to them to manage their emails / out office time. I'm not going to stop doing my work / following agreed processes just because someone wants to not get emails.

It would be fine where I work. We’re all based remotely over several different time zones so we always schedule our messages to be sent when it’s convenient for the recipient. It’s quite easy to set up a scheduled time and date for an email.

If we’re out of the office for any length of time then we are encouraged to ask people to contact us on our return and give an alternative contact if appropriate.

However we all work independently on different projects so nobody needs to cover our workload while we’re off, anything that comes in will get allocated to someone who is available.

It implies they won't clear their inbox from what's happened while they're away.
Which to me seems a bit blunt. A simple Ooo stating your not there and when you'll be back should suffice. Or if there's a colleague who can take messages but not necessarily do your work you could leave their details with consent.

But the outcome is the same, in that you know they're not there. At least you know where you stand.

You do know most companies have a way of letting you do different emails for internal vs external? I would only expect to see that sort of thing on an internal email purely as a way of making sure the request still needs a response. The amount of times I’ve come back to emails and spent ages going through them to find maybe 75% of them had been passed on to someone else, if I had the balls to put that as a message on I bet it would save me loads of time!

Not acceptable where I work but I get why people may do it.

I don’t do it and haven’t seen in used much where I work but I can absolutely see the use. The amount of times I’ve come back from leave and spent a day replying to emails only to get response saying it’s actually been dealt with elsewhere is such a waste of time

Setting your Out of Office message to Deceased, will really help stop your emails from building up. Also it is fair to say that none of the people who emailed you will be expecting a reply when you get back from holiday, so that can also be a huge life saver.

If they catch up with you blame it on a typo, or tell them that your account was hacked by a disgruntled coworker.

Would not have been acceptable at my last place. We had to put “if your query is urgent please contact x on tel no y or z on tel no abc. Otherwise emails will be read on my return.”

Yes you can schedule emails in outlook. I do it often if I’m working late and don’t want someone to think they need to reply to me at all hours just because I’m working later, so I schedule to send at 9am

I've only seen it a few times at my work and find it rude. I'd then have to work out how to schedule my email to send the required time. 🤔

I equally can't stand 'I'm on leave, please email [email protected]' and then he has an OOO saying 'I'm on leave, please email [email protected]' and it goes on and on! 🙄

I think it’s a good idea. In organisations where it is an internal OOO message only.

the sender can just set to schedule when the person is back in the office. TBH I do this if I get an OOO anyway from someone so my email pops up on the day of their return.

it is so much easier for the person retuning from AL rather than go back a week or two and check through all unread messages.

That's what I'd do.
I schedule emails all the time for people. Saves overloading Monday mornings email work.

If I got that response I'd just reschedule the email to send on the date they were back. Surely that's what most people would do?