A Survey by Institute of Leadership & Management reveals the nation’s workplace pet peeves – with email named in the top three.

Unnecessary “all-staff” emails was cited as one of the biggest bugbears for UK workers and 56% took issue with co-workers sending an email, rather than talking to them, despite sitting opposite.

Charles Elvin, Chief Executive of the ILM said: “When office-based teams work in close proximity for long periods of time, we see that seemingly trivial issues can grow disproportionately, if left unchecked, and begin to cause upset and resentment.

“By proactively dealing with potentially divisive issues such as excessive e-mails managers can ensure they don’t grow to affect teamwork and morale. In most cases, the best first step will be to give some prompt and constructive feedback to the individuals concerned.”

A poorly thought out email sent to a colleague sitting opposite may take a few seconds to send but can cause a huge amount of resentment.

Emails can be read quite differently to how they were intended.

Sometimes a face-to-face interaction, or a quick phone call, can be more appropriate.

It becomes evident that these small things – such as emails between colleagues – can lead to bigger problems.

But what is also clear is that these issues can be avoided if only we started to communicate with each other about HOW we communicate.

So why not start the conversation with your colleagues. Talk about what is working and what does not work about the way that you all use email. And agree new ways of working – that work.

Start to communicate about your communication – it will save you and your teams a lot of time, stress and unnecessary ill-feeling.