Easter Bank Holidays! Love them – two days either side of a weekend when we have official permission to shelve work if we want to. If you are taking some time off, you may be putting a brilliant Out of Office message on your email. The question is – what will you put in it?
When I worked for North Yorkshire Police, we were expected to be quite corporate and professional in our Out of Office – this was reinforced when a couple of waggish employees thought they’d tell email senders what to do with their emails until they got back, apparently forgetting that members of the public could be emailing them too. “Words of advice” were given to the employees, and standards for Out of Office messages were published, about sticking to dates of absence and points of contact only.
Nowadays I like to inject a little interest into my Out of Office – at Christmas I used a Dickens quote, and I usually say something about what we’re up to for the duration of the break. This time, I’ve gone with:
Sunshine, spring lambs and chocolate as far as the eye can see…Easter holidays are here, and I must confess this is one of my favourites. I’m closed until after the long weekend to make the most of it, so back at the laptop on Tuesday 22 April. Happy Chocolate Bank Holidays to all who celebrate!
I think it’s a nice opportunity to show a little bit of personality – it’s a direct communication with someone who’s emailed you, so why not?
But it’s easy to take it too far, just like those cheeky colleagues of mine. I wrote a blog post on brilliant Out of Office messages a couple of years ago, and I thought it might be time to see what new gems have been unearthed. Here are a couple of autoresponders that certainly made me laugh, but I’m not sure I’ll be using them myself!
“You probably don’t want to hear this because you’re at work…but I’m on holiday and will be back on 1 September. If you need something right now, and there’s no convincing you otherwise, then please call…”
“I’m away with my family, checking emails sporadically. I may or may not reply to you during this time, based on whether or not I like you, and the urgency of the problem and whether I’m responsible for it.”
“I am currently out of the office. I have a mobile phone and access to email, but I certainly won’t be using them for work purposes.”
“Hi. I’m thinking about what you’ve just sent me. Please wait by your PC for my response.”
“I’m currently out of the office, and can be reached by waiting until I get back”.
Good luck with composing something a little different for your Out of Office message – and have a fabulous bank holiday weekend!
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