Don't email your bizmates while they are on Summer vacation

When one of your biz partners (employee, vendor, coworker) is on his or her annual summer vacation – do them a favor and leave them alone! When I worked at Yahoo, I put my employee’s vacation days into my calendar to remind me to leave them off threads or BCC/CCs. When there was an email that they would eventually need to see or be copied on (when they got back), I would part it in the draft folder, then send all of them the day they returned. The research I conducted for my Email Etiquette training program indicates that a person would rather get twenty emails first thing on Monday, coming back from time off, than twenty emails spread out over their vacation. Why? When you send emails to people on vacation, they feel the need to check their email more often, respond to you and get engaged again with work. This destroys the healing process of time off and is quite inconsiderate on your part. Great managers and business partners let their people take real time off. No chatter, CYA-FYI junk, just pure time off. After all, you wouldn’t call his or her cell phone twenty times while they were on vacation! Check out more ideas on better email behavior at: EmailAtoZ

Comments

[Joe Lavelle]

I love it Tim! I am preparing a post on manners and you have inspired new thinking for me on this.

People feel compelled to monitor their PDA while on vacation for emergencies and it is just good manners not to clog their e-mail with CCs and BCCs on non-emergent topics.

Best wishes and always Act As If It Were Impossible to Fail!
Joe Lavelle http://www.ActAsIfBlog.com

[Harry Tucker]

Very well said, Tim.

If one sends their team members away for R&R, one should allow them to actually recharge in peace and quiet.

Otherwise the returning employee is frazzled and frustrated because they never had a chance to wind down in the first place.

I know of a number of people who returned from vacation and promptly quit because they weren't left alone for two minutes while on vacation!

Take care and create a great day, Tim.

Harry Tucker

www.harrytucker.com