Slaves to email

May 6, 2008, 6:22pm,  278 views

Emailing has grown by about 40 per cent per year since 1996 and consequently we have become a slave to our emails.

That’s the view of Sharon MacNevin from Email Management Solutions, speaking at the Perth Chartered Accountants Business Forum today.

“Email can become a form of ping pong; with a rapid fire of emails between sender and receiver. But when this occurs we are not considering the message and adding to the 65 per cent of emails that fail to provide the recipient with enough information to act on,” Ms MacNevin said in a media statement.

“This can also lead to misinterpretation or even mean that we send more emails to validate what our intent is.

“We have set up a very urgent environment for email where the demands put on the recipient often doesn’t allow them to task the email into their daily workload. Despite very little of the work we do is urgent.”

In 1996 the average email user sent an average of three emails per day and received five emails.

Business communication was based on phone, fax, memos and face-to-face. In 2008, the average office worker will spend more than 15 hours a week reading and sending email while costing the organisation approximately $28,000 per year analysing and searching email.

“Before email, messages sent by memos followed a business format email has forgotten these rules,” Ms MacNevin said.

“Memos were properly titled and contained a defined action and timeframe. Yet emails often provide a variety of options without a clear subject heading stating the intent and including an action.”

The rapid growth of email has meant that many organisations and individuals have forgotten the business guidelines for written communication, sending, receiving and filing of mail.

“People feel compelled to reply to emails even with just a ‘thanks’ adding to the overwhelming number of emails people receive. A simple ‘NRN’ (no reply necessary) can reduce the overload significantly.

“We have become a nation unable to resist the urge to keep checking email. With the introduction of blackberrys we can access email 24/7 wherever we are.

“But we are lowering our production levels rather than being more effective. By simple techniques such as switching off email and limiting access to three or four times a day, will increase our productivity levels.”

Comment: Yes, I agree with all of that. Before email came along I was a big memo writer. The information conveyed and requests made were precise. In most cases, immediate action was not required.

Email is good though for retaining a written record of semi-important things which would otherwise not be recorded, like did I really approve that request for leave? Scan Outlook to find the answer.

Email demands attention though and I accept we’ve become slaves to it. I like MacNevin’s idea to tag emails with NRN if appropriate, and will implement that in my workplace.