German vehicle-maker Daimler has an innovative approach to holiday email, which many people about to return from holiday may well wish their company would copy, writes William Kremer.
There ought to be a word - and perhaps there is, in German - for the mix of feelings that accompanies composing and activating a holiday out-of-office message. There's smugness, of course, and a gratifying sense of laying down one's virtual tools after a horribly long shift. But for many of us, these nice feelings are tempered by the knowledge that in two weeks, refreshed but depressed, we will have to trawl through hundreds of emails, many of which will be conference room notifications for meetings about crises that have passed.
But for employees at Daimler things are a little different. Email these people while they are on holiday and you will get a message like this: