Tuesday, November 16, 2010
We all think that email is so convenient, quick, and inexpensive. But if it's not used effectively, email can end up costing you time and money, turning into an inconvenient part of the day.
When you consider the average recovery time from any interruption is about four minutes, imagine the cost to your organization when people look up every time an email is received. Additionally, consider the amount of time spent handling irrelevant emails. Apply this to how many employees you have and how many emails they receive per day and it adds up to literally hours of productivity lost in just one day.
Emails are also costing you and your employees to have unneeded clutter and stress. You may find some employees have thousands of emails in their inboxes. Employees will often try to organize emails based on subject matter or importance. What typically happens is that employees end up filing items into files they cannot find.
Sending unnecessary emails to employees not only takes up their time, but also clutters their inbox, making it difficult to find information when needed. For some people, email has become a constant source of stress. Think about how stressed employees are that receive thousands of emails a day. Especially those who try to keep up with all of them and then come back from lunch to find they have almost a hundred more to deal with.
There are ways to help reduce the stress from emails and increase efficiency. First, make sure your subject lines are descriptive, enabling readers to set priorities based on the subject, rather than having to open the email. Also, put the main point, or request, in the first three sentences. Emails should be brief and to the point so that the reader doesn't have to sort through needless information.
Avoid unnecessarily copying your employees on an email; the only people who should be copied are those who truly need the information. For each additional person copied on the email, that person will have to spend time reading, understanding, and prioritizing, which adds up to a huge use of company resources.
By sending well written, to-the-point emails, only to the people who need to read it, company productivity will dramatically increase and you and your employees will be less stressed. Make these changes today and be amazed at how your business communication runs much more seamlessly and efficiently.
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