What does ‘Being a responsible email user’ mean?

What does ‘Being a responsible email user’ mean?

The issues surrounding work related email continue as traffic reaches truly astonishing proportions.

Global email traffic is set to rise at a rate of 13% every year – unlucky for some. Business related emails alone will reach 143 billion as early as next year!

With this in mind it is imperative that email users in organisations take responsibility for the emails they generate.

The benefit is clear – they will reduce the number of times that colleagues are unnecessary distracted with a loss of focus and wasted time.

Over the next few weeks we will be publishing a series of blogs on the most common problems that people experience with email.

To kick off this series we have listed below responses to a recent work related email perception study which identified the top 5 issues with business use of email.

Below each is our recommendation on how to easily tackle it:

1) Excessive back-and-forth replies:
Make it a rule to pick up the phone if an email bounces back and forth more than twice

2) Using email when the message will probably prompt a short (or long) conversation:
Often we respond to an email when it is quicker to pick up the phone or walk and talk

3) Unnecessary use of “reply all”:
Default to not doing a reply to all unless you can really justify it

4) Poorly written emails that lack clarity:
Use a clear subject line so your recipient can prioritise from their inbox – tell them what you want upfront

5) Copying others unnecessarily:
Don’t be lazy – reduce the unnecessary CC’s, take people off reply to all lists and save them time

Email productivity training tackles all of the above behaviours and many many others – it also reduces email related stress.

“Probably the most effective investment of training any organisation could make.” – Nikki Evans, Human Resources Manager AIT

What are you going to do to ensure that your company email volume doesn’t grow by an unlucky 13% next year?