There seems little
that can stop the interminable rise of internal email.
Reading email can now be logged as a significant time
user but how much of it is really needed? What does
it tell us about the organisation and what can you do
to reduce it.
Common complaints
Go into any medium to large organisation and ask what
most irritates people about internal email and you will
end up with a typical hit list such as this:
- Requests for information
- Social messages – ‘Its birthday time,
cake is by the coffee machine’.
- FYI – ‘Copied for your information’
- Chain mail – Long dialogues between two or
more people which are then copied to others.
- Automated email reminders – being reminded
daily of a due date approaching
What is clear is that it’s not just an irritation.
Reading and dealing with non-urgent email can waste
huge amounts of time in the working day, whether on
the PC or the Blackberry. There is also the impact for
the IT department who has to find the storage capacity
for the growing email archive burden.
Out of control
Internal email volumes are growing relentlessly. Analysts
Gartner Group reckons that email volumes are growing
by 50% per year. This is fuelled by new regulatory requirements
which demand long-term data archiving such as Sarbanes-Oxley.
It is no surprise that firms are starting to look at
how they can put some restrictions on a communication
channel which seems out of control. Phones 4U, the mobile
phone retailer, hit the headlines when the founder and
CEO decided to ban the use of internal email. The company
calculated that an email ban could increase productivity
and save around £1m per month by eliminating 3
hours a day per employee, previously spent in emailing.
Employees now rely on the phone and the company intranet,
using email only for ordering purposes. Other organisations,
such as Nestlé and Rowntree have also taken steps
to reduce email.
Mind your back!
Phones 4U suggested that the email ban would mean that
people would have less chance to pass the buck and take
more responsibility for their actions. Too often, copying
people in on an email is less about genuine communication
and more a matter of back-covering. What does that say
about your organisation? People avoiding responsibility
can signify a lack of empowerment or a fear of making
decisions in a blame culture. Banning email alone will
not change that. There is also the fear of being excluded
from a decision-making process, wanting to be in on
everything – but influencing nothing! There is
also the concern that managers who are not naturally
people-oriented hide behind email.
What happened to the intranet?
Requests for information and announcements to all staff
sent by email, may also indicate that the company intranet,
which is always a good idea until you come to use it,
may not be delivering. Sharing information across the
organisation can be managed more effectively on a well
designed intranet, offering tools and self service functionality
to employees. The alternative is sending an internal
email for information which may be important to the
sender and the least priority for the receiver. The
result means that people waiting for a reply are delayed
in completing their task.
If your company intranet is like a morgue, a library
for policies and HR forms and little else, then no amount
of promoting it or face-lifting it will make a difference.
The intranet needs to be an integral part of the working
day. Then company announcements (and birthday wishes)
will be seen on the desk top by everyone.
Ten 5 tips for reducing or improving internal email
- Conduct a company survey. Find
out just what frustrates people about internal email
usage. Build an evidence base by calculating how much
productivity is being wasted.
- Improve your intranet. Don’t
leave it to the IT support team. Make it a project.
Benchmark the success of other companies and integrate
it into your business process.
- Look at the corporate culture.
How clearly are people’s responsibilities defined?
When project meetings take place, decide and agree
who needs to be in the loop and for what purpose.
- Develop a company protocol. When
you have a well functioning intranet, let people know
what you are trying to achieve – better quality
of communication by reducing the email noise present
the policy and guideline.
- Personal discipline. Keep your
emails brief and use meaningful subject lines. Review
every message before sending to check for clarity
and to make sure they contain nothing that will embarrass
the organisation or make it liable. Do not abuse the
CC and BCC functions - copy only people who really
need to receive the message.
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