If you receive an out of office…

[Trainarmrestfairy]

and your query is urgent. Would common sense not dictate that you send that urgent query to the person on the out of office?!

I feel it’s so obvious it’s not even a question, but this keeps happening and now I am starting to grow paranoid that I am unreasonable to expect people to do this instead of reverting to me with ‘they are out of office so I can’t get an answer.’

As a first port of call, I'd email the contact on an out of office even if it was only vaguely urgent.

However theres various issues which might result in 'i cant get an answer'

>there is no person on the ooo
>that person isn't replying
>I already speak to that person, who may or may not have told me to speak to the ooo person.
>the ooo contact doesn't know anyway
>ive ended up in an ooo loop where they're directing me to someone else who's out of office.
>they're back tomorrow and its not THAT urgent.

I can’t quite follow you.

Are you suggesting that the person with the urgent query should still be getting hold of the out of office person?

Who is the out of office person naming as their alternate contact in their absence? You, or someone else?

If people are reverting to you, who are you relative to the out of office person? Can you assist with the urgent query, or is it not your field?

If the OOO reads “please email Andy Jones if your query is urgent” etc then yes, I’d email Andy. Andy may decide that the query isn’t as urgent as the sender thinks it is, and leave it for the original recipient to pick up when they return - perhaps that’s why people are saying “I’m not getting a response”?

This.

It's not clear who you are in this scenario?

What keeps happening?

Common sense would dictate that, even if the out of office did not indicate another name, you'd ring the office and ask to speak with someone about the urgent query.

People are incredibly stupid unfortunately. You can't really do much about stupidity.

I'm not sure I follow what you mean.

Is it that X has an ooo on and that names Y as the contact for anything of urgency, but you're Z and they're contacting you instead?

Or are you X with the ooo on and people are complaining that they're not getting a response from their urgent query but haven't contacted Y as your ooo states?

Edited to say actually that in both scenarios the person with the query would be unreasonable if they haven't contacted the person named on the ooo for their urgent query.

If it was urgent and there was nobody on the out of office response, I would probably try and find out who else could help. Pretty easy to do these days if they're on teams and you look at the organisation bit.

So yes, if I was a manager and a member of my team was tasked with dealing with an urgent enquiry and they sent one email, got the out of office and gave up, I would be disappointed

There’s no other contact included in the OOO response?

I’m not sure what the issue is but if I’m not at work I’m not logged on and checking emails

but my OOO has a raft of contacts on it should it be urgent

@Trainarmrestfairy I don't understand the question, I'm sorry. Are you saying that you set an OOH Message, naming the person the correspondent should contact if their query is urgent, and that they then come back to you because the person named in The OOH message is also not available?

If so, Do you check with the alternate contact in your OOH message is available before you set up your OOH message? If you don't, why not?

This. If it’s urgent, call the office and ask for assistance.

Had the opposite issue where I would be steps out the door, computer shut down and done for the day and someone would ask me to do an urgent query and they would look dumbfounded when I said to ask the people who are still working to do it because I’m not the only one who can. It would take me 10 minutes to log back in alone to even look at the issue.

It's ten years since I worked anywhere with desk phones, and five since I've been based anywhere with any sort of phone number at all. Obviously my experience isn't universal but in a lot of scenarios this just wouldn't be an option.

Agree with the basic point, though. Unless you're taking about very new or junior colleagues who perhaps do need a bit more support.

Just revert back with ‘keep trying till you get one’.

No I wouldn't send anything to the person who was out of office because they're not working.

I would send it to a member of their team if I knew them or contact the receptionist/office manager/directors EA to ask about it.

I wouldn't expect it dealt with immediately if it was very specific to the person on leave.

I think your question is quite clear.

You’re having people (presumably who report into you) come to you saying they couldn’t get an answer because X is o/o without attempting to contact Y who is named in the o/o.
YANBU

Yep.

‘X is OOO’ - Person I manage
‘Do they have an OOO on?’ - Me
‘Yes’ - Person I manage
’Is there a named PoC on their OOO?’ - Me
‘Yes’ - Person I manage.
…
’So email them?’ - Me
’But that’s not who you told me to email, that’s someone else’ - Person I manage
’….’ - Me

The OOO in question is very standard ‘I am on annual leave until date. If your query is urgent, please resend to Y.’

My managee seems unable to compute that they should contact Y, instead of telling me that X is OOO and then staring at me. Unblinkingly.

It’s an ongoing, longstanding issue (that this person has no impetus or critical thinking skills), but because it seems so sodding simple I’m starting to wonder if I am going crazy.

You’re not.
Just tell them to bring you answers, not problems.

Surely the next part of conversatoin is, i"if the person you were emailing is out of the office, then of course you should contact the next person on the list. It's about the issue we're having, not who specifically fixes it"

Out of office person needs to name a back up

Contact that back up

Eeesh OP. That sort of passivity would drive me round the bend. Is this person on any sort of performance improvement plan?

people don’t seem to read OOO. I currently have one on that says “OOO with no return date, please contact… then a giant list including phone numbers/emails”
my job is the equivalent of working at sky call centre, you can ring anyone and they will deal with it
I logged on the other day to upload a fit note and I’ve got hundreds of customer emails ones where they have emailed me repeatedly asking me to do stuff/queries etc etc

There can be two sides to a story. I can see how in some circumstances someone might think that since you'd asked them to contact X you specifically wanted X to deal with it. It depends how you asked really, and what the query was about. If for instance I was emailing X to complain about Y's behaviour, and X's OOO specified Y as the substitute point of contact, I probably wouldn't email it to Y.

Your problem though is your own lack of management in allowing "an ongoing, longstanding issue" where you tolerate a person who "has no impetus or critical thinking skills" - as the manager, you are the one who needs to either get them to improve or replace them with someone suitable. (There's a third option I suppose, that your expectations are wrong.)

who's employing this idiot 😂

If you manage people like that, you have the patience of a saint!

@FoodAppropriation would you believe I tried to get rid of them on week one, and was told by HR I couldn’t (worried about a tribunal) so I have to go through ‘proper channels.’ Six months later…I am still dealing with it.