Maintaining email control when out of office

Want to take PTO and not come back to hundreds of emails ... Communicate your time off. For all my friends in the US, I hope you all enjoyed the long Holiday weekend. Now if you took a few extra days, to extend the holiday, perhaps Wednesday, maybe Friday and heck even today, well you might be coming back to an inbox filled with messages from customers. But imagine you cut that in half ... hey maybe even a fourth. When I started my role as a CSM over 12 years ago anytime I took time off I made sure to manage communication with all of my customers and internal team members and as a result, I'd come back to only a handful of emails (usually threads I was on) and the flurry of Marketing emails (easy to delete, sorry Marketing friends). Here's what I would do: 1) Include my upcoming time out of the office in my email signature 2) Email all of my customers 2-4 weeks in advance letting them know about my time off and encouraged them to book time before I left (I'd do something similar to key internal stakeholders as well) 3) Offer clear instructions on who to go to in my absence - My backup CSM, my leader for escalations and Support for anything technical 4) Set up a strong out of office message with names, emails, links, dates and more - everything they would need while I was away 5) Closed out and completed as many projects/tasks as possible to avoid leaving things outstanding Not only did this approach help my customers and set good expectations (easy win for relationship building), it also set me up for success. I could go on vacation or take my time off without worrying about what I'd be coming back to. We all know this is like Sunday Scaries x10! It's the little things that make the biggest impact. So if you have some time off planned this summer ... Set yourself up for success. Welcome back - let's tackle this full work week!

The pressure to follow established cultural norms within an organisation can be strong, even if those norms are dumb and drain productive time or invade our non-work time. (And as Australia seeks to implement a right to disconnect law, it's important to remember that we all have a choice not to follow dumb cultural norms!) And one of the dumbest norms of all is to take a break from work to refresh one’s mental health and spend time with people that you love, only to dread the last two days knowing that you’ll have a thousand emails in your inbox waiting for you. I used to be the same and then I made a decision that changed everything for me. You can do the same. The last thing I wanted to do when I returned to work was to spend hours and hours reading out of date information or negating the purpose of my holiday and allowing overwhelm to immediately return. So I stopped and used the technology to my advantage. I set up a rule to send every message received during my holiday to trash. I freed up time in my first week back for people to bring me up to date - verbally - and by Tuesday I was usually all caught up. As opposed to trawling through my email day and night looking for the important messages. I ensured that people knew of my approach, so that it wasn’t a surprise that I didn’t have their email. I did this by using the text below in my out of office message. This is a cultural norm that everyone can immediately challenge. Name check someone in the comments below who would benefit from this! Copy and paste 👇 ------------- ‘Thanks so much for your email, however I’m currently on leave until xxxx. If you require assistance, please contact xxxx who is covering for me whilst I’m away. Please note that your email will be deleted. This is not because I don’t view its contents as important, but rather that I can do nothing with it, nor do I wish to return from holiday to a thousand emails, thus affecting my productive time for my first month back. Thanks for understanding (also, you should copy this approach!) [Your Name]’ -------------

Returning from leave to 1000s of unread emails is overwhelming. Setting boundaries starts with something as simple as your Out of Office message. That’s why your OOO message isn’t just functional. It is a powerful way to prioritise your wellbeing, set boundaries, and prevent burnout. 📧 Typical OOO messages like these:   ↳ “I’m out of the office, but I’ll still check my emails.”   ↳ “I’m away, but feel free to text or call if urgent!” …might seem harmless, but here’s what they’re really saying:   ↳  “I’m not fully off-duty.”   ↳  “I don’t trust myself (or my team) to manage without me.”   ↳  “Your time is more important than my boundaries.” Instead, consider this bold alternative: Thank you for your message. I am out of the office, recharging and enjoying annual leave. Emails received between [dates] will be deleted. Please send your message again after [this date]. If you need an urgent response, please contact my colleague, [name and contact details], who will be available to assist you. It’s more than an autoresponder—it’s a statement of values:  ↳  Respecting personal boundaries  ↳  Showing confidence in delegation  ↳  Reinforcing that rest is essential for performance. Yes, it might surprise people. But setting clear boundaries is how we make space to recharge, ensuring we return refreshed and ready to perform at our best. What’s the boldest OOO message you’ve ever seen? 📧