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

I think my colleagues would think I was a moron if I had that as my out of office message. 😂

For one, not all emails are sent by a person who will receive that automatic reply and re-send the message. A lot of the emails sent to me by publishers for example are through an automated system. If I miss the deadline because I don’t read emails sent while I’m on leave, my work doesn’t meet publication deadlines and doesn’t get published, which would get me in very hot water with my co-authors.

Beyond that, Dh runs his own business. You can’t ask a prospective client to not bother you on AL and to email again about the money they want to spend on your services in 2 weeks time. That’s a pretty fast way to lose a potential client.

Dh checks his email and responds to it regularly, even on leave. As do I, though not as much. In my industry, it’s the norm (unfortunately) for people to schedule and attend meetings even on holiday! I don’t, I think it’s bonkers, I have work life balance. But it wouldn’t be at all unusual. Lots of my colleagues see AL as time to catch up on work and they take loads of things they haven’t had time to do away with them to sit and work on from the beach (probably between meetings 🙄).

This would not be acceptable where I work. For one thing we get a lot of training messages, and reminders of systems access renewals, so anybody daft enough to just delete everything on return from holiday is missing all of that. Secondly and more importantly, it implies that the sender is spamming out stuff that's not targeted to the correct recipient, and the sender has nothing better to do than track other people's holidays. Our out-of-office only triggers on the first mail received from each user, so you'd need to keep a note in case you needed to send a second one to the same person, which would also need to be delayed till their return, but wouldn't trigger the out-of-office reminder! In manage my inbox just fine. It's not my job to do extra tasks so that other people don't have to manage theirs!

I realise it’s not the done thing in most places, but actually this is way more sensible than the default position we all use (or all in terms of anywhere I ve worked or sent emails to ) of accepting emails just drop in whilst we are away, with sender just getting a polite OOO message saying “I’ll get back to you”

im tlaking about non externally focused stuff, not customer facing

im retired now, but was receiving up to 250 mails a day. I never could read all of them even when at work, and had to filter out a lot …but going away for two weeks meant I was coming back to 2500-3000 emails. In reality no one can catch up on that …not unless you’ve a very undemanding workload. 2500 emails alone would have taken me around 42 hours work at absolute min to open, scan through, and file/delete/action. Realistically it’s the minimum, and it would be about two weeks to catch up from two weeks away. I don’t have two weeks spare to do that on top of two weeks holiday- I was already in catch up mode after holidays with actual work I already had to deal with.

so, in reality, people who get a lot of emails will do this anyway. They simply won’t bother reading stuff, unless it jumps out at them, or someone follows up when they get back onto work.

another good reason to make very good use of title/headers explaining what action needed and when, to help people screen important/urgent stuff out without having to open the email.

And that’s the issue with this default position. People will get the OOO message and find someone else or do a work around, or by time someone has got back it is over and done with and world has moved on. But the email receiver doesn’t know that till they’re wading through all this crap on their inbox and contacting people.

those that can’t move on, will get OOO, and will come back with a “ did you read my email” once you get back, at which point you say, “no” but depending on what they say in terms of importance and urgency on the phone/new follow up email, you say “but I will now”

the waste created in terms of people’s time, effort etc for the default, is huge if you multiply that over a company - ours had 46000 employees globAlly…do the maths..youre talking about significant headcount wastage

it makes way better sense for defult to be that if OOO STOPS any messages landing in first place, or does, as in this posters case, state automatically to resend message when they’re back. Makes much much better use of people’s time and resources.

I’ve worked since mid 80s. This deluge of emails in your in box after time off, is a horrendous outcome of the rise of computers, emails, same time messaging and all the other ways companies make their staff always be on duty. People need time away. De stress. If you’re one of poor sods whose company insists you use your own device for emails, calls, mess engine etc, you are seeing these messages stack up on holiday - that doesn’t allow people good quality time away to switch off completely. It’s a real bugbear of mine that companies expect employees to use their own personal phones - just say no folks, it isn’t healthy.

pre email and same timing, we managed ok…people called on phone, listened to answer message. Put phone down and called agian when you got back..or did that strange thing of walking to their desk to talk…

external customers/client it’s a different ball game- but I’m not happy getting a OOO response with no one else to contact in meantime as a customer. I’d expect there to be cover and a person named, with email contact to forward to.

so actually, good on this person to challenge the norm and make sure they’re using their time effectively. People are upset becuase they just see their email ignored and asked to do something. But it makes much better use of resources this way round.

and as for people that send email to your in box when they KNOW you’re away on hols or worse, sick leave, they need to delay send emails automatically, or give themselves a talking to to realise they’re not that important, or the message inset, if it can simply sit in your inbox box for a number of weeks.

YANBU and I have seen that before a couple of times. In each case I've copied the message sent, left it in the draft folder and then diarised to resend when the recipient returns to the office. It's a bit of a faff to be honest and enabling that type of Out of Office message is not very professional in my view.

I’ve seen it for long term leave (6 months plus) where I think it makes sense.

I had a few weeks off (7 or so) and mine OOO explained that I would be away for a while and left delegates who could be contacted. Otherwise I would go through the emails when I got back so it could be a couple more weeks after my return.

If you group emails in threads (on windows) it means you can read through a chain of emails from the most recent, and then delete all if no longer relevant.

Ridiculous. Does the company come to a standstill?
Dunno, seems a bit entitled to me.

Would be frowned at in my place. I'm expected to leave ooo confirming expected dates of return and alternative contacts for enquiries that can't wait. I see this sort of thing creeping in among younger colleagues though. It may become the norm. I despair at their lack of commitment and admire their determination to protect their time in equal measure tbh.

Not acceptable imo
a colleague of mine has an out of office that says ‘any emails during my leave will not be read and will be deleted upon return’

Not acceptable at DH work. One of the associate directors has the password to your email account and they check your emails daily and either reply themselves or send to another member of the team who will have a better idea of what has already been done or needs done to deal with. If anyone has booked a one day holiday after going to the football it is understood that they leave their work phone on and either advise the client or contractor that they are out of the office for the day and will deal with it the next working day or if urgent either let the client or contractor know who to speak to in the office that day. Alternatively phone the office themselves if they have already done some work on the job in question and let the office know what has been done, what the problem is and who to follow up with.

Do you ignore the gas bill if it arrives when you're on holiday?

No, but then I am quite firm in the knowledge that nobody else is going to pay my gas bill while I’m gone, so it will definitely be waiting for me when I get back! Lots of work related things end up being sent elsewhere when the out of office bounces back, or dealt with by someone else, so you could spend all day replying to emails only to get “ah nevermind it’s sorted now” in return.

I think it’s unprofessional. I always say will be off until xx date, please contact xx or xx for urgent issues, otherwise I will respond when I return

Most staff in my public sector employer have direct emails from councillors and the local MP. If we put that OOO on our emails we'd be in serious trouble. Their time is more important than ours is the mantra.

I think it depends a lot on the place and nature of the work.

I give an alternative contact if their query is urgent otherwise I’ll reply when I get back. I don’t have the sort of job where I can just ignore things but some emails I get do require attention, particularly if I’m on block leave. I’m a manager in a standalone role.

So unprofessional and entitled! Expecting someone else to have to remember your return date and re-send the email. Wow! Can’t believe people think this is reasonable and aren’t given the boot!

Didn't say read, said deal with. That's obviously a combination of reading and immediate delete when you get 500 a day. What I'm saying is why can the big list of emails on your return be dealt with in the same way instead of a full cull and expectation of others resending if important.

A couple of years ago I came back from 7 days leave and had just over 1500 emails. I had to go through each item it took me 2 days. Now I have an ooo which says I am in leave and your email will be forwarded to my admin team. Then any emails that come in are forwarded so that someone else can deal with it. Not sure I would be happy if any of my team were to say resend after I return .but I didn't want to have to spend days dealing with old emails again

Probably not - I would expect emails to be dealt with upon return.

I put my out of office on and state I will deal with on return. There is no one else who does my job (technical specialist) so they would have to wait.

I never did it but a senior manager where I used to work went further than that. Actually saying all emails received during leave would be deleted and to resend after x date if important. Nobody else did that. I don’t know how they got away with it really.

This would not be acceptable in my workplace. I’d pull up an employee on my team for this and would expect my manager to do the same for me.

At my company you’re expected to name backups in your OOO msg and figure out what still needs addressed in your email when you return.

My method is on my return I move all emails from my time off into a temporary folder. From that I scan for anything that I know didn’t get sent to my backup and all emails received the day prior.

I have my email viewed as a conversation so when I go back the OOO folder it’s super easy to see what is still open and what has been resolved. I don’t spend a lot of time on these emails though. And mostly figure it’s been taken care of or someone will send again if it hasn’t been. But it stays in the folder and available until I empty it after my next long time off. I don’t bother with the folder if I’ve been gone less than a week.

It’s annoying and wouldn’t be something I would do but just set your email to schedule send on the date they return.

I've never heard of a request to resend, but out-of-office automated responses are the norm in my previous and current job, both in my workplace and from people I have contacted. Usually the response states either when the person will be back or suggests another person to contact if a response to the e-mail is important. It is a good idea, it saves any anxiety over sending an e-mail, failing to get a response, and wondering if the e-mail actually made it to their inbox.

I would take a dim view of anybody working for me setting this out of office. It’s rude, unhelpful and unprofessional.

Yes, if it comes by post I won't be at home to receive it and pay it. If it comes by e-mail, I will only be sporadically checking e-mails and if abroad not at all so it might be a day or three before I pick it up, and even then, I will likely leave it until I get home. That is no problem because the deadline for paying a bill is always several days or longer from receiving it, precisely because people might not pick it up immediately. Of course, with direct debit being the norm these days, I don't have to worry about paying bills at all, it gets done automatically, same with credit card statements.