Let's talk about the role of e-mail @ work

I always wanted to know how the working community thinks about email, so, by all means, please leave your comments in the section below.

Here is how I see email at work, if we don’t use it right its gonna cost you lot more than what you think, sometimes we feel accomplished by just clearing our inbox, even in cases where we have not done any actual work, I understand that reading and sending emails / making decisions is what your job requires, but before you put yourself into that bucket, think how many of those emails you sent have actually solved a business problem or added value to your business directly.

I confess that I feel this false sense of accomplishment with zero inboxes, but sometimes I just see self as a human router pushing information around, I do feel guilty forwarding those email long threads with just an “FYI” which would cost so much time to the receiver, just by putting some context about the email thread could save hours of productive time.

I totally understand that this is a metric blackhole, but if you look at the number of emails your organization sent per day, the average number of words per email, average typing speed and reading speed and combine it average salary you might end up with the cost of email to your organization. I can sure you that this will be quite a sizable line-item in the cost.

I’m not saying that this money is not worth spending or adding value, but I think business owners must know what is happening in this space, as this is one of the important line-item.

I’m also not promoting the collaboration tools like Slack or Trello here. Most of the leaders believe that these collaboration tools will reduce the silos, but I believe that is not the case, it has to be in the culture of the company and the leaders who enable collaboration. This is a topic for a different day.

But coming back to email at work, this is how I manage it, I always encourage my team not to send an email if it is within the same department, I will also encourage them to go and talk to the person directly, companies spend a lot of money to set up open offices, lets leverage it (takes you out of your desk), if you have question and need a quick clarification just ping in one of the messaging apps and wait for response, and I promise myself to reduce the FYI-no context email forwards.

I encourage the community to stop and think about the role of email again, are we really using emails in right way? with working creeping into your WhatsApp looking for immediate response, do you think the role if emails is limited broadcast long length messages and getting electronic approvals in black & white.

Originally published by me here