Work email examples
Work email examples for everything that runs through your inbox: the sign-off, the auto-reply while you're away, the leaving card, and the phish dressed up as HR.
Email sign-offs
From Best regards to unhinged
Browse sign-offsFarewell messages
Leaving card lines, ready to sign
Write a cardOut of office messages
Auto-replies for any time away
Copy a messageVoicemail greetings
From polite to a talking-to
Hear a greetingPhishing email examples
Most clicked lures, marked in pen
See the red flags
Which page fits which email
Write
For the emails you send. Over 300 sign-offs are sorted by tone, from Kind regards to unhinged, each with how the reader takes it. The farewell page adds over 200 messages for a leaving card, a retirement or a work anniversary, ready to copy once you type the names.
Away
For the days you’re not at your desk. Type the date you’re back and who covers for you, and over 200 out of office messages fill themselves in, from client-safe to unhinged. The voicemail page does the same job for anyone who still phones, with over 100 greetings.
Inbox
For the email nobody asked for. 12 phishing emails, one of each kind office workers fall for in tests, carry every red flag underlined in pen. 4 real company emails break the same rules.
What goes wrong in a work email
Work email examples people get wrong
Needless CCs are the email habit UK office workers mind most, at 44%. Long emails are a close second.
A quarter of them name “as per my last email” as the phrase that annoys most. “Sent from my iPhone” annoys a quarter too, so the phone’s own sign-off grates as much as the most passive-aggressive line in the office. The email sign offs list says which closings are safe with a client and which only work on a friend.
The phish that looks like HR
In late 2025 tests, all ten of the most-clicked subject lines were internal topics, and the top two used the company’s own name. The phish that works reads like a memo from HR. Plenty of real memos from HR read like a phish. The phishing email examples mark each red flag in pen.
When you’re away from your desk
The auto-reply
86% of US workers say they’d still read an email from their boss on vacation. An out of office message tells everyone else you’re gone. The boss’s email gets read anyway.
The phone
Only 14% of people answer a number they don’t recognize, and 41% let it ring and wait for a message. Most strangers hear your greeting before they hear you. Keep the funny voicemail greetings for the line your team calls.
The goodbye
3.1 million Americans quit their jobs in August 2026 alone. Plenty of them leave a card doing the rounds, signed mostly by people who met them twice. A farewell message that names one thing they did beats a signature and a smiley face.