Email: Draining Productivity? Creating Liability?
Email: Draining Productivity? Creating Liability?
There are estimates that many of us in business spend around two hours each day "doing email". Most business people now receive upwards of fifty emails a day and it is easy to waste two minutes or more processing each one.
This impacts on our available time, generally skews our priorities and reduces our chances of delivering the real results the business or our boss wanted…
The rapidly increasing volume of business email is eroding productivity and causing individuals serious stress. May be more importantly by using email in place of more suitable means of communication, many of us are causing misunderstandings which impact morale, add to our stress levels and also expose our organisations to time-consuming complaints and possibly expensive lawsuits.
Too many emails
Some research suggests 50% of emails require no response and some 25% are deleted before being read – so we could be wasting 75% of our email writing time… Are you really sure you need to send that email? Is it just to cover your bottom? Invite an action? Persuade? Inform?
Most emails are too long.
Comprehension rates of people reading emails are not great so why waste your time writing war and peace. They are not likely to understand it even if they can be bothered to read it (I refer my honourable colleague the comment I made earlier)
Try these principles
- One subject – one topic – no scrolling; that will keep your emails pretty tight…
- Five short sentences or bullet points
- Ideally only one question
- Use a relevant subject header even if when replying or forwarding you have to change the original header – Remember Ronseal – it has to do what it says on the tin.
- If you are requesting an action from the other person – put it in the subject header or the first 140 words rather than at the end. Repeat it if you must – just put it first so it can be seen in the preview pain.
- Oh and “Pack First” – add attachments before you write anything to avoid the most common email error – forgetting the attachments…
- Names last – if you only type in the email address as the final task you will spot yourself sending half written emails
If you want any more ideas on improving your own or your teams productivity – please send me a short email…
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