If I deleted all my holiday email on the day I returned, then I would actually have to work that day. I much prefer the current system of, "Sorry, I'm still working my way through my emails" while I get back up to speed.
Should holiday email be deleted?
51–60 of 74 posts
Re: Should holiday email be deleted?
#52This sort of rules usually result in double standards. HR drones and other departments have great work-life balance. While software devs are chained to their desks, and can only take holidays when it suits company.
Re: Should holiday email be deleted?
#53I know there are things at my job that only I can do, even if they are documented. If certain things will need urgent attention while I'm out, I'll arrange to have someone cover for me. I can understand not reading it, and setting the expectation with your employer and coworkers that you're on vacation and you won't be reading emails. That's very reasonable. But just deleting emails? That sounds kind of nuts. I handl…
Maybe a solution to this could be the mail client/system sending an automated email to the sender on your return (as a reminder).
"Two weeks ago, you sent me an email, however my mail client automatically deleted it. If it is something I can still help you with, please reply back with the original email.
-- this is an automatically generated email --"
Re: Should holiday email be deleted?
#54I think this is misguided and would seem to reinforce bad practices, poor etiquette and bad culture. bad practices, i.e. if you want work life balance, don't check your email when you aren't in the office. Manage your co-workers expectations that you won't be replying when you aren't on the clock, don't work for a boss that has the expectation that you are functionally on-call at times when you should be with your fa…
I think what many people fail to realize, in a corporate setting, is that email is asynchronous communication. Email is not chat, and we need to approach it differently. When I send an email, I expect an answer when you get time--if it's something I need within 24-48 hours, I will call, visit, or IM you if you're online.
In my experience, people understand that. What they are not good at, however, is having the perspective to know when asynchronous communication is more appropriate. (You have a question which requires a lot of explanation, and I'm doing you a favor by answering it? Email.)
Re: Should holiday email be deleted?
#55I know there are things at my job that only I can do, even if they are documented. If certain things will need urgent attention while I'm out, I'll arrange to have someone cover for me. I can understand not reading it, and setting the expectation with your employer and coworkers that you're on vacation and you won't be reading emails. That's very reasonable. But just deleting emails? That sounds kind of nuts. I handl…
I agree with Nursie; it is still your problem. If it's the sort of thing that only that person can handle, then such things are more appropriately tracked in a separate system which is not lossy. (Think bug-tracking software.)
Re: Should holiday email be deleted?
#56I know there are things at my job that only I can do, even if they are documented. If certain things will need urgent attention while I'm out, I'll arrange to have someone cover for me. I can understand not reading it, and setting the expectation with your employer and coworkers that you're on vacation and you won't be reading emails. That's very reasonable. But just deleting emails? That sounds kind of nuts. I handl…
> If I have a question for a coworker, I'll email it to them. I don't expect a response if they're on vacation. The question is now theirs to deal with, in due time. By auto-deleting it, it reverts to being my problem. I'm sending that email for the purpose of getting work done. In that sense, auto-deleting it is preventing me from doing my work. And then I just have to send it again once they're back.
Here's the deal, and this is the point I think the (maybe unnecessarily heavy-handed) policy is meant to drive: You're not free to task your colleagues with work while they're away on holiday just be cause you can. If you rely on someone who's not there to get your job done then you can't do you job. That may or may be be your fault, but the organisation needs to be able to keep functioning while members are on holiday.
Sure, there exists cases where you only need a reply eventually, and only from that one exact individual, but in most cases, someone is actually covering and can handle the request as part of the normal workload, and in most of those cases, everybody is better off if you actually re-route the request to that person immediately.
And here's the bit I think is slightly heavy handed: Coming back from holidays, I like spending an afternoon skimming over emails for situational awareness. Deleting email would deprive me of the option to passively catch up rather than depending on having everything explained to me by colleagues. Skimming a few thousand emails is easy, making sure you've caught everything single thing you might be expected to respond to is stressful.
Re: Should holiday email be deleted?
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think laws are the answer. Can anyone say spending time with family and friends are top priorities all day, everyday? I wouldn't want laws telling me they have to be. Sometimes making money to support your family is more important than spending time with them. Some people don't have a family to spend time with. Some people don't like their family or have any friends. Some people like their work and that's whe…
If one person works late then other people have to match them. So you end up with a tragedy of the commons/race to the bottom. Which is exactly the situation that calls for laws.
> If one person works late then other people have to match them
or risk being seen as working less hard as that person.
You missed a pretty important bit.
Re: Should holiday email be deleted?
#58I think this is misguided and would seem to reinforce bad practices, poor etiquette and bad culture. bad practices, i.e. if you want work life balance, don't check your email when you aren't in the office. Manage your co-workers expectations that you won't be replying when you aren't on the clock, don't work for a boss that has the expectation that you are functionally on-call at times when you should be with your fa…
>> bad practices, i.e. if you want work life balance, don't check your email when you aren't in the office. Manage your co-workers expectations that you won't be replying when you aren't on the clock, don't work for a boss that has the expectation that you are functionally on-call at times when you should be with your family and friends. >> Corporate policy along the lines of "delete email while you are on vacation".…
No, we're on the same page. My point is that you should never receive most of those email in the first place. If they don't get sent (because there is a functional email culture in the workplace) then there's no need for dysfunctional policy to remedy the issue.
Re: Should holiday email be deleted?
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think what many people fail to realize, in a corporate setting, is that email is asynchronous communication. Email is not chat, and we need to approach it differently. When I send an email, I expect an answer when you get time--if it's something I need within 24-48 hours, I will call, visit, or IM you if you're online.
Totally! this is exactly right. I work with one small group of people that outside of our weekly status meeting, shares a ton of chatty one-liners via email several times a day. It drives me crazy that I can't get them to adopt Slack for these types of interactions but sometimes it is impossible to teach a dog new tricks ;-)
Maybe because there is nothing wrong with our old tricks that you seem to think are "archaic."
Maybe I hate phones?
Maybe I am too busy to chat with you, not like I would want to anyway.
>grumpy people like to deal in email! and we like it and we don't care for your hipster secret sharing app or Facebook
Actually we just think your edgy teens that need to grow up.
Stop trying to fix email. This is so annoying, because it is not broken. Email is perfect bliss, and technology has not advanced one particle iota further after it's invention. A truly perfect invention that suits everyone's needs.
Re: Should holiday email be deleted?
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The world has really deteriorated in regard to family life since the 80s. How much of that is due to both parents working, rather than the wife staying home and managing the family?
That is likely part of the perceived problem, but seems lacking. When the wife stayed home to manage the family, we had the husband working 40 hour weeks. Now, the gender equalization is not taking the form of the 40 hours being shared between the spouses, but rather the 80 hours shared between them.
There is overhead on jobs. Unless performing the most simple mind numbing factory assembly line work, 2 x 20hrs Then there coordination overhead in the family - even if the two parents work 20 hours each, it's unlikely that it's exactly divided so one is always home. Child care costs a lot of money. Eating out costs money.
But the most important reason: People still want careers and a career on half the working time takes in extremely simple terms at least twice as long.