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Articles for April 2008
Is Your Email Culture Strangling You?
By Marsha Egan, CPCU, PCC
Email. Our lives wouldn’t be the same without it. It is a tool that has
revolutionized the workplace, improved communication, and allowed employees to
accomplish more in less time. However, if mismanaged, it can have a devastating
affect on productivity and profits.
Have you ever stopped to think of what your organization’s email culture is? How
do your employees use email? How do they manage it? How do they send it? How do
they save it? The habits they adopt, whether they are positive or negative, can
be contagious and suddenly your business has it’s own email culture.
Here is just one example of how an email culture can evolve. A boss realizes
that he needs to call an urgent meeting with 3 of his managers. He sends an
email needing a response in the next 15 minutes. Two of the three see the email
and respond. The third, who was working on an important project, did not have
his email on, missed the request, and angered his boss.
Number three has just now learned that he can never turn his email off for fear
of missing an important email. But it doesn’t stop here. It rolls downhill. The
three managers have now been given "permission" to use email as an URGENT
delivery system. They use it in their departments, and very quickly, the entire
organization is infected with this virus. No one can turn off his or her email
for fear of missing something vital. Employees become slaves to the "brinnng"
and stop productive work anytime an email comes in, even if it’s just spam.
And that’s just one example. Think of the practices of copying everyone under
the sun, just so you don’t miss someone. Or how about using email as a chat room
with multiple recipients to resolve dilemmas? Or how about using email to
critique someone’s performance? One person does it, others do it. Culture is
changed.
Email can also be extremely costly if not used effectively. When you consider
the average recovery time from any interruption is about 4 minutes, you can
imagine the cost to your organization when people look up every time an email is
received. Do the math. If you stop what you’re doing every time you receive an
email and get 30 emails in one day, that equals 120 minutes of recovery
time--two hours of waste! And that doesn’t include the time spent handing the
email. Now multiply that by every employee, everyday, and you can see how
profitability can seriously begin to drop.
In order to instantly combat this loss, give everyone in your organization
"permission" to turn off auto-receive, and instead schedule email deliveries
every 90 to 120 minutes. This can shorten recovery time to about 30 minutes - a
saving of 90 minutes added right back to your bottom line.
Here are a few other tips to help you create a positive office email culture
excerpted from my new eBook, Reclaim Your Workplace Email Productivity: Add BIG
BUCKS to Your Bottom Line:
NEVER use email as an urgent delivery system. If there is an urgent matter, pick
up the phone or walk down the hall.
Move everything OUT OF your inbox. Your inbox should not be a holding tank and
your employees can manage their time better by putting emails appropriate
folders so that no important information is ever lost or hard to find.
Make Subject Lines VERY specific. By including details in subject lines, you
will help others sort and prioritize their work. Instead of having a subject
read, "Wednesday Meeting", have it read "Please bring the attached handout to
the Wednesday 2:00 Staff Meeting."
Copy only the people who REALLY need to receive the email. Each "extra/nice to
copy" person you add will have to open and read the email, adding unnecessary
tasks to their already full days. Multiply this times the number of unnecessary
copies, and the productivity drain adds up.
For more information, please visit www.eganemailsolutions.com.
© Marsha Egan, CPCU, PCC, CEO of The
Egan Group, Inc.,
http://marshaegan.com. Marsha is a certified executive
coach, professional speaker, and internationally recognized email productivity
expert. You can visit her website at
http://EganEmailSolutions.com or
reach her at
marsha@marshaegan.com
Disclaimer: This information is of an advisory nature. It
should not be relied upon as legal advise or a definitive statement of the law
in any jurisdiction. For such advice a reader should consult their own legal
counsel. No Liability is assumed by reason of the information contained on this
web site.
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