On your way out? Make sure to set up your Out of Office Message
Why do you need an out of office message?
As we are approaching the holiday season, many people will take advantage of their vacation days and other well-deserved time off to visit family, escape to a beach, or sneak in holiday shopping.
But for many industries, the holiday season doesn’t mean that business slows down. Product-based businesses are cranking out products and stepping up marketing efforts. Service-based businesses are working to line up business for 1st quarter and lock down contracts and budgets. The work doesn’t stop, even if an employee takes a pause.
Luckily, most of the work we do happens in teams where we can share responsibilities and take turns covering for each other.
Out of Office messages are one of those tools that can seem annoying but are actually helpful.
What is annoying about them is that on the writer’s side a) you have to turn them on before you actually stop checking your messages, which leaves you feeling a little guilty, b) you have to figure out what to say, and on the reader’s side c) the person you want to talk to isn’t available and d) you keep getting their out of office message whenever you copy them on something you know they need to see.
Those things are annoying, but mostly resolvable.
More importantly, these small inconveniences are offset by how enormously helpful out of office messages are.
First, out of office messages are helpful to the person writing to you. That person has expectations about when you will get back to them. Your out of office message helps to manage those expectations and direct others toward a person who can actually help them while you are away.
Second, out of office messages are helpful to you because they allow you to focus on whatever awesome things you are doing outside of work without worrying about what responsibilities you have abandoned or what clients can’t live without you. Out of office messages allow you to be free.
Guidelines for the perfect out of office message
Here’s what you need to do to ensure your time away is safely and responsibly protected and that everyone who might reach out to you is taken care of:
You can schedule the out of office message to start after you leave the office. You must schedule it for a time after which you will not check your messages. That means, turn off your work email on your phone, computer, and wherever else you might be tempted to look.
And then you *must not* check your messages after that point. Once your out of office message is on, the only person you will respond to is your designated contact person. They will decide which messages require you and which ones don’t.
Keep in mind that if you respond directly to anyone (other than your designated contact person), you are violating your Out of Office message and *decreasing* your credibility with others. They can’t believe you when you say you are out of the office or they can impose on you even though you are “technically” not working. Holding the boundary of not responding once your Out of Office message is on actually *builds* trust because you are doing what you say you are going to do.
Also, if you respond to some people and not others, they might talk and someone’s feelings will get hurt that you violated your boundary for “special” people but not for other people. Don’t do that. Simply don’t respond to anyone other than your designated contact person.
You only have to say who people should contact while your away and when they can expect a response from you. That’s all your out of office message says. It can be something short like this:
Thanks for your email. I’m out of the office right now.
You can expect to hear back from me by Friday, December 1.
If you need a response before then, please contact my colleague, Alan: alan@company.com and 970-555-3409.
Make sure Alan knows that he is your out of office contact person. And that you have talked about how to handle any urgent things that come up. You might have your email automatically forward to Alan so that he can review all the incoming messages and decide which ones you need to address yourself. You don’t have to do that, but it might help Alan better manage the messages. Do make sure that Alan is the gatekeeper for you and tell Alan how to get in touch with you if absolutely necessary since you will have turned off your email on your devices. It is now Alan’s job to either cover your job or contact you if he can’t handle it. In no circumstances should you communicate with anyone other than Alan. As soon as you call a customer from your beach vacation, your vacation is over and you’ll have to turn off your Out of Office message and start working again. Make sure to protect your time away and the trust you have built with others by adhering to your own rules and boundaries.
For that reason, you don’t want to tell people the exact days and times you will be away because they will then expect to hear back from you the day they know you are back. They will call you, send follow up emails, and schedule meetings all while you are still trying to get caught up!
Give yourself a few days. We all know that coming back from time away is a bit overwhelming. You’ll have to sort through everything that has happened since you left, which means reviewing an average of 124 messages for each day you were gone, talking to colleagues who have so many things to tell you, and checking in with bosses. And that first day will probably already have several meetings scheduled, so you won’t just get to lock yourself away in your office and chug along until you’ve responded to every email.
The only date you should include in your out of office is message is the date that people can expect to get a response from you. Then hold yourself accountable to that date. And if you don’t get it all done by then, you’ve allowed people to send a follow up message after that date has passed.
3. Use the out of office message settings to select that people should only get the out of office response on the first email or one time. Make sure you are limiting how many times people–who might have to copy you on messages for documentation reasons–are notified that you are not at work. Once should be enough. For example, Google will only send the out of office message to a contact once every four days–even if you are copied on several messages from that same person.
What not to do in your Out of Office message
Some cautions on out of office messages:
Your message never needs to and should not include an explanation of *why* you are out of the office. If you tell people why, they will use it against you and/or judge you for it. If you say you are on vacation, they will whine about how much you go on vacation or how they wish they could take a vacation. They will be jealous and petty. Don’t encourage that behavior. We all are entitled to vacation time. Take yours! If you tell people you are out for medical reasons, they will ask intrusive questions, send inappropriate get well wishes, or freak out about your imminent death. If you tell people you are spending time with family, they will lament their own family relationships for good or bad. The only people who need to know why you are out of the office are your boss and HR–and even they should only know exactly what is necessary to process the appropriate type of leave. Vacation time is for vacation. Medical leave is for medical. Family leave is for family. They don’t need to know anything beyond those three options: vacation, medical, family. Not where you are going, not who you are with, not what you are being treated for. Do not give them more information than absolutely necessary as it will be used against you when it suits your employer.
Only use out of office messages when you are away for multiple days. While business hours have traditionally been 9-5, our global and remote workforce means that people are working in time zones all around the world and at hours that may not be standardized or consistent. If you are spending the afternoon in a professional development training session, you don’t need an out of office message. You’ll get to those messages when you are back at your desk the next morning. Out of office messages are for when you are away for more than 24hrs.
Do not use them if you will be away for less than 24hrs. Remember, the standard response time for an email is 24hrs. So, unless your company has a specific policy on this, you always have 24hrs to respond to any email message you receive. That means you should have time to manage any emotional response you have to a message, craft a rough reply, and wait at least 15min or more before reviewing it and sending it out. Writing well requires patience. Take the time you need to write messages that will build trust and connect with your audiences.
Feel free to use my template above as your Out of Office message. And I’ll make sure that Alan gets a big end-of-the-year bonus for covering all of our jobs.