The amount of emails I receive in my inbox every day is verging on the ridiculous. It is almost impossible to give each and every one the time and attention it deserves and ploughing through them all certainly adds a considerable amount to my workload – especially those emails that really have no relevance to my job at all and only serve to clutter up my ‘deleted’ folder.
I was therefore interested to read about a study published this week (delivered into my inbox, incidentally) which was conducted over an 18-month period and monitored almost 4,000 people from 150 UK-based organisations, to discover the impact of email in the workplace. The findings revealed that 72% of us spend, on average, at least one hour per day on email, whilst 39% spend in excess of two hours; people hoard on average 2,769 emails each; plus, we receive on average 34 emails per day – 47% of which do not help us to do our jobs.
The report suggests that as email is such a powerful business tool, and so many people regard it as the number one way to communicate in business (and spend much of their working lives either sending, receiving, deleting or forwarding them), it is therefore surprising that little or no time is dedicated to providing guidance on how it should be used effectively. This, in turn, can lead to stressed employees, unsure of issues such as the correct format and tone of voice to use, and speed of response.
Questions that can arise, says the report, are: Should an email always open with a salutation? What does CC’ing an individual really mean? What is the call to action for the recipient? How many times a day should you check email? Are your own emails actually contributing to the ever increasing amount you receive?
In his HR blog this week, Frank Hobson also mentions this research, and makes a valid additional point about email. He remarks that the layout of email can really slow the working day down – with masses of “extraneous detail” to work through before you actually get to the bit you want to read, not to mention the annoying “lime green or sky blue” typeface that can sometimes be used.
The good news is that Expert Messaging, an organisation which aims to transform the way email is used in the workplace, has unveiled its email charter, in response to the research, with the bold claim that a typical employee who adheres to the principles of the charter can expect to save around 40 minutes a day.
Well, that remains to be seen – but what do you think? Do we need to spend our precious time learning email etiquette to ensure we don’t waste time using said email? Or do we simply just need to apply a bit of common sense to all of this? Answers on a postcard please…
Lucie Mitchell
Editor
