How workers are taking advantage of the power of email signatures
Earlier this month a working mom’s email signature went viral for its honesty.
Meg St-Esprit wrote, “Please note I may be slower to respond to email in the months of June, July and August due to the United States’ inability to provide affordable childcare for working mothers.” It’s a reminder that our email signatures can help set boundaries and nudge others to be mindful of what’s necessary for a work-life balance.
Other workers have also been using their email signature in a similar way to St-Esprit. Lily Seibert, an account executive for Dini von Mueffling Communications, told WorkLife she’s seen email signatures like, “I understand your working hours may be different from mine. Please do not feel obligated to respond outside of your normal work schedule.”
“As fast replies are usually the norm, it’s nice to see people encouraging others to maintain their work-life balance,” said Seibert.
Global hiring company Oyster encourages its employees to have a similar email signature because it’s a globally dispersed company. It recommends saying, “My working hours may not be your working hours, especially as Oyster is a global company. Please do not feel obligated to respond outside of your regular working hours, and thank you for your patience as I reply when I am able.”
The company’s principal people partner Kim Rohrer has an auto response email that shares similar sentiments: “In my family, we are precariously balancing two full-time working parents’ jobs with (often-disrupted) childcare for our 6yo and 2.5yo. Therefore, my response to your email may take some additional time or come at an unusual hour, as I embrace the asynchronous, nonlinear work lifestyle. Please do not feel obligated to respond outside of your regular working hours, and thank you for your patience as I reply when I am able.” She closes her auto reply email by encouraging other workers to consider setting up something similar.
We’ve seen an evolution over time in out-of-office email responses change from, “I’ll be out these days, but here’s my cell in an emergency,” to something along the lines of “I am taking a well needed break to come back rejuvenated in a week.” However, that push to remind people of the importance of work-life balance only comes when you take time off. That’s where email signatures can make a bigger difference, giving more people the opportunity to read it and be reminded that we all have other responsibilities going on alongside work.
“It makes workers human for a moment, which is really important,” said Kris Martinez, internal comms and employee experience at Oyster. “An email signature is another touch point and opportunity for folks to express themselves as humans. Over the last few years in particular, since we’ve all come into each other’s homes, we’ve started to take on a more empathetic approach to work. Something like an email signature is a good glimpse of what’s going on in people’s lives.”
It’s that gentle reminder that someone isn’t ignoring you, but they have some real life stuff going on at the moment that they need to take care of as well.
But it’s beneficial in other ways too. Suggesting this company-wide email signature at Oyster that lets people know they are all working from different time zones has given their employees the opportunity to have open and honest discussions about time zones and the best ways to work together. It’s a starting point for workers to have those conversations about when their schedules best align and work together from there. While it’s helpful for in-house communication, it goes a long way for external communication too.
“If they engage with an external audience that might not be familiar with this kind of email signature, it’s what we want,” said Martinez. “We’re trying to challenge the way people work. If somebody reads that signature and it makes them think twice, that’s a really big win.”
Carol Howley, CMO at email signature solutions company Exclaimer, believes that an email signature can be looked at as open billboard space for a company.
“There’s a real opportunity to use this almost like an unused billboard that you have in your email as a company and as a person,” said Howley.
People often use their email signatures to promote new events, social media feeds, marketing campaigns or other things. But at Oyster, they want to use that space to encourage people to be empathetic with one another about work hours and work-life balance. Other companies might consider the same.
“If you want to highlight a really good point that it’s hard to find childcare, you can do that too,” said Howley. “It’s an untapped resource.”
Howley said that, in a personal email signature that highlights not having childcare, for example, you could even go as far as linking to an organization that supports providing more of it.
“There is amazing use for that for companies that really want to make a statement and stand out and say this is hugely important,” said Howley. “You can pretty much bring in anything you want to your email signature.”