That on-leave out-of-office tip seems completely wrong to me. That's the culture you are trying to "save"? If someone needs you badly enough to interrupt your

That on-leave out-of-office tip seems completely wrong to me. That's the culture you are trying to "save"? If someone needs you badly enough to interrupt your hiking trip, then they probably know your phone number already, and can judge whether it is important enough to interrupt you, contact someone else, or wait. Generally when you get back from leave, your inbox is full of ephemeral out of date crap, and it is totally inefficient to wade through it all. A friend of mine used to have in his (internal) out of office reply: I will delete all my emails upon return except for those with the word "RELEVANT" in the title. If I need to deal with this upon return, please re-send it with "RELEVANT" in the title. If it was important enough, people re-sent it. A little extreme, but it worked for him.