Post-Vacation Email Quicksand Can Indicate Culture Challenges: Strategies for Staying Refreshed and Ahead

As the summer season kicks off, much of the workforce splits into two categories: those on vacation and those who are still working.

Enter the vacation auto-reply. You’ve seen all kinds, starting with your basic, “I’m out from this time until that time. Contact my generous coworker who will drop everything if you need immediate assistance.” 

The other extreme is what I like to call the “oversharing martyr.” It goes something like this: “I’m away on a long-overdue vacation cruising the coastal Mediterranean for 3 weeks, working on my tan with absolutely no internet except Instagram. I’ll be happy to reply to your email once I finish the multiple Reels I will share with you here. Enjoy!”

Theoretically, if vacation planning is well-managed, colleagues should not have to encounter any auto-reply email at all. In this perfect world, they’ll know inherently that their co-worker is away because they were properly informed and prepped. Yet the emails come flooding in anyway. Why? 

If you dig further into some of the common reasons colleagues email you during vacation, you’ll start to see some revealing things emerge about your organization’s work culture, leadership style, and/or operating systems. Consider five reasons listed below to see how it could signal some challenges:

To keep you in the loop = The need for control. CC-ing on email has long proved useful and doesn’t necessarily indicate a problem. But when you request CC’s while out of office, check in on what drives your need to know. Is it reflecting a lack of trust or confidence in your colleague? What precipitated that? Is there a better way to access “the loop” or let go of details?

To flag for future discussion = Email as an inefficient project management tool. You might work in an organization that defaults to email as a primary exchange of project information. Having priorities and agendas hiding deep in messages requires sifting, extracting and analysis, taking up your valuable time. 

To defer an important decision to you = Lack of trust or empowerment. Good leaders delegate and model good decision making with transparency. Have you empowered your team with decision matrices or scenario planning? Is there a culture of fear of making the wrong decision? What has precipitated that? 

To show you a crazy email thread = Conflict and unresolved issues. These emails typically have at least 5 colors of text with many, many indented comments. While titillating, these types of emails could signal a deeper cultural distress, either with colleagues or clients. Are there better conflict resolution mechanisms in place? If not, you could be resigning hours of time watching a car crash or a soap opera.    

To demonstrate they’re working while you’re gone = Lack of trust and accountability measures. If you are sensing a lot of “didn’t need this email to tell me that” situations, you might look at what’s driving the overshare. Email as a productivity mask could signal many cultural or operational challenges. These could require a leader to reflect on better signals of accountability and transparency that don’t clog up your inbox.

It’s no secret that the sense of vacation refreshment can quickly fade when faced with an overflowing inbox upon your return. Multiply that by people within your organization and cumulative days off and suddenly there are weeks and weeks of unproductive time just consuming information and sorting requests. In fact, a Harvard Business Review article reported that regaining our initial momentum following an interruption such as reading and responding to an email (sometimes called “switching cost”) can take, on average, upwards of 20 minutes.

What are some ways to get ahead of this post-vacation email quicksand and hang on to that rested and ready feeling?

Find your filters. If you haven’t or aren’t able to refer clients to another colleague, sorting clients and colleagues with filters can be a way to quickly answer to the people who help you pay the bills. My colleague Peter shares a simple email hack he used effectively as a CEO. First, he shared his personal policy with his team: if he is not directly addressed on an email and is simply CC’d, these emails would automatically go into a non-urgent folder for a later review. No one could expect a look until at least a few hours after the send. In other words, if it’s urgent, call, message, or email me directly and clearly.

Set policy. Many organizations have email signature policies. How many have an auto-reply policy or time off checklists? This might initially appear heavy-handed, but presented in a constructive way that communicates the wins not only for you but for the whole organization gives a sense of both freedom and empowerment. Who wants the quicksand? No one! Determine how you’ll mitigate it together.

Work on your culture. It’s never a wrong time to take stock of your current culture. In a culture assessment, you can start to canvas and explore your team’s deeper perceptions and realities and work on areas of improvement. An intentional culture of increased collaboration and empowerment enhances trust and transparency, allowing necessary work breaks that keep you and your team refreshed and ready to bring their best selves to the table.

Avoiding the email quicksand requires proactive measures, thoughtful policies, and a focus on nurturing a positive work culture. By implementing these strategies, you and your team can reclaim that coveted post-vacation serenity and maintain a productive mindset.

Want to learn more about conducting a cultural assessment through collaborative Culture Design Workshops? Let’s connect.