AI Is Helping Executives Tackle the Dreaded Post-Vacation Inbox

While planning a nine-day trip to Japan with her family earlier this spring, Lindsey Scrase was anxious to avoid the stress of work piling up in her absence. For most of her career, getting away has inevitably meant back-to-back catch-up meetings and an overflowing inbox upon return. “I want to really unplug this time,” she said before the 11-hour flight. So for the first time, the chief operating officer at Checkr Inc., a San Francisco-based background-screening company, decided to outsource the slog of reentry to artificial intelligence.

Not too long ago, most white-collar workers could head out on vacation without fearing the email hangover that awaited them—originally, because messages weren’t accessible on everyone’s phones yet and, even after, because 9-to-5 boundaries were better established. But today’s always-on workplace cultures—accelerated by the rise of remote work—have blurred those lines. Now a growing number of companies have rolled out tools designed to quickly catch up busy managers and staff who (gasp!) mute alerts on holiday. Microsoft Corp.’s Copilot, one of the most prominent offerings, costs users $30 a month, while Google’s Gemini and Atlassian Corp.’s Rovo are bundled with enterprise subscriptions; the latter now counts 1.5 million monthly AI users, up 50% from the previous quarter.