Managing your email – the expert’s view

May 1, 2012 - PRLog -- The first thing that is clear is that email can be a fantastic medium when used appropriately but has been proven to be addictive.

I have spent the last 13 years changing the culture of email in organisations both large and small, in the UK and worldwide. I have discovered that there are some universal truths surrounding email and its impact on our working lives.

I often hear  people use words to describe their use of email that are indicative of an addiction – “reliant”, “overwhelming”, “love/hate”, “controlling” and “dread”.

Not only is email an addictive medium but is also a constrictive medium – especially in business. One big difference that I make users aware of is the lack of any instant feedback – such as facial expressions or verbal affirmations such as nods or yes/ no answers.

The volume of information that is exchanged in a live communication is vast and often underestimated. Email is often used when it is wholly inadequate for the message – trying to achieve consensus on slightly complex issues or attempting to communicate a creative nuance.

A recent Microsoft study suggested that it takes the average worker between 5 and 15 minutes to completely re-focus on the task in hand after such interruptions.

The proliferation of Blackberries and other PDAs increases our need and desire to “multi task” – for example to read an email while in a meeting (often seen as rude), or checking email when at home – which can seriously impact our work/life balance.

The fact that we are now expected to do more than one thing at a time brings its own challenges. Interestingly, it has been proven that multi-tasking makes us less productive and less able to complete tasks effectively.

The more tasks we attempt the less able we are to complete them properly.

The physiological impacts of email addiction and information overload have also been studied and they too make alarming reading.  

Some research recently published in the US claims that stressed office workers who suffer from email overload display what it termed “email apnoea” – where the person holds their breath or breathes more shallowly when responding to emails.

This over-reliance on email in the workplace sees many of us defaulting to this way of communicating for the majority of our messages, even when it is the worst medium for the task. The danger here is that we lose human interaction.

Even something as simple as walking across the office to speak to someone is lost.

The Work and Health Research Centre at Loughborough University has data which shows office based workers are suffering from lack of exercise, depression and stress as a result of sitting down for most of the day seemingly tied to their email.

Can email training provide the solution? Having looked at all the psychological and physiological impact of email overload it is clear that email management training in general is of benefit to all who use email in business.

During the past thirteen years I have seen common mistakes around email proliferate. The widespread use of tools such as: “reply to all” “cc” and “bcc” with often little or no understanding or thought of the impact is just one area that email management training tackles.

One alarming statistic I often quote is that one poorly written email sent to 25 people unnecessarily can take easily half a working day out of an organisation – and that is just the start. Endless reply-to-alls can turn these emails into what I call “runaway trains emails” where no-one takes control over the message.

These can be a vortex into which days and days of productivity are sucked into and wasted – never to be regained.

Lost productivity in the click of a mouse.

With this fact in mind it is important that we only send emails to those who really need them – that our emails are concise with relevant subject lines – always written to aid understanding in one reading.

Make it clear to the recipient what is required at the top of the email and provide them with the information they require as clearly as possible.

An email culture of poorly constructed emails, over reliance on email and the abuse of the “reply to all” function are so often endemic within organisations that little or no improvement can be made without a cultural shift – away from ineffective email and towards concise, constructive and productive email which can save time amongst other benefits.

Email management starts with an individual but can only be truly effective if the whole organisation adopts certain strategies or rules surround email.

Often incorporated into an organisational email policy, email management strategies would include such topics as the approved use of subject line pre-fixes, how and when to use groups (and who belongs to which group), when to email and when to reply by telephone, the use of a company email signatures, an agreed use of salutations and sign offs, file sharing and the use of attachments and the universal introduction of email templates.

Email overload is a real and present danger in the workplace.

Company wide email training aims to break to cycle of email addiction and introduce an acceptable and accepted way of managing work related email.

It should be made available to all staff – especially staff new to the company – before granting them access to company email accounts.