While other forms of collaboration and communication are being introduced – almost daily it seems – email is here for now and still the dominant way we communicate in business.

Human beings find it difficult enough to communicate clearly face to face but put wire, distance and time between them and clear communication becomes something that has to be worked on – it does not just happen.

It is now obvious that in businesses if people are not trained on how to use email – you just get what you get. In most organisations that is what you have got – huge amounts of unnecessary traffic, mixed messages and misunderstandings, hiding behind the medium, legal nightmares and so it goes on. People need training. The training rule is also needed for any new communications took like Yammer – as mentioned in the article – or Lync or any other tool that is introduced.

If you don’t plan this into your training budgets and include the major stakeholders when you introduce these tools you will just get what you get. And with many of client organisations,  this is what they have got (and have had for many years!).

Plenty of money is invested in the hardware and software – yet very little is invested in showing the humans how to get the most out of the hardware or software.

We can prove that with the right training people can write clearer more effective emails that get results fast. We also know that time spent on email is reduced by at least 30 minutes per day – that is the equivalent of 16 extra days per year. Just this year already we have saved each member of staff at an outstanding University college 42 minutes a day.
So how long will your organisation leave it until they train people on how to use their email and other communications tools properly.

If you want some help you know where to look.

An interesting BBC article here which shows that even very mature organisations that have the best communicators in the world (like the BBC) need training too.