A recent survey by Gartner Group found that up to one-third of internal business e-mail was unnecessary.
A recent survey by Gartner Group found that up to one-third of internal business e-mail was unnecessary. Other findings included
employees spend an average of 49 minutes a day managing e-mail almost a quarter spend more than an hour a day managing e-mail only 27% of the e-mail employees get demands immediate attention. Gartner says that e-mail’s success is also its biggest weakness. Trying to be helpful and communicative, employees unnecessarily e-mail their co-workers too often. They clutter up servers and sap productivity with the volume of these messages. Gartner calls this friendly-fire e-mail ‘occupational spam.’ “It is deceptive because it looks legitimate, but there is no intelligent filter that will screen it for relevance.
Although 70% of enterprises have an e-mail policy, fewer than 40% have developed productivity best practices. Fewer than 5% have formalised them. Ridding an enterprise of occupational spam alone can save 30% of the time employees spend managing e-mail.
Gartner recommends developing an e-mail productivity programme that formalises e-mail etiquette guidelines:
count to 10 before hitting “Reply All” - then count to 20 use distribution lists sparingly. e-mail kudos and praise are great, but recipients should be encouraged not to hit “Reply All” in response recipients of unwanted e-mail should draft polite replies to let the senders know they did not need to see it. invest in intranet tools for remote-team collaboration. Chat rooms, bulletin boards and even instant messaging are better for this purpose than e-mail identify one person in a department who will own an e-mail thread as early as possible. This reduces unproductive team e-mail problem solving and avoids duplicated efforts stop the friendly fire - do not originate or forward jokes, chain letters or other non-business-related e-mail assume that agreement is implied. Avoid sending needless responses initiate the last e-mail. End messages with phrases that close a thread.
