First up let’s be honest, withdrawing from the barrage of emails is simply not an option in today’s society.
It is through emails that we connect with family, friends, schools, organisations, get updates or e-newsletters, and the list goes on.
In business you simply cannot function without an email whether it is hearing the latest staff update, responding to clients or communicating with team members within the business.
Keeping connected is important, but does it consume more time in our day and lead to decreased productivity?
The answer, according to studies around the world is a resounding ‘Yes’. Emails are distracting and time consuming and can even lead to stress in the workplace.
The Radicati Group, a technology market research firm operating in the US and the UK, report that in 2014 there were 4.1 billion email accounts and 2.5 billion users, both business and personal around the planet.
According to their studies, the majority of email traffic comes from the business world which accounts for over 108.7 billion emails sent and received per day.
These numbers are responsible for stress being experienced by many people who attempt to maintain a work-life balance.
The average business worker in 2014 received 85 emails per day (75 legitimate and 10 spam) and sent 36 emails per day.
Chairman of Sydney Hills Business Chamber, Anthony Moss, said he believed there was certainly an overload of emails in business.
“This is mainly because people are not thoughtful about how they use emails and its purpose,” he said. “Certainly I believe that emails are good for communication, but not good when working on different projects.”
Working in management consultancy, Anthony get emails from his team of consultants, a virtual assistant, suppliers, and clients who are mainly at a director or senior management level.
“I can’t get away from emails and find that it can be very useful. It can be good to capture and disseminate messages. Messages need to be short and to the point,” he said.
Anthony says more clients are using Apps and other project management tools to reduce emails, which he believes is a more efficient way of working on projects. One way to reduce the “noise” and stress created through emails is by managing them well.
Four years ago the Australian School of Business research found that workers in Australia spend less than 2.5 days per week actually doing their work, the rest of the time was spent trawling through emails.
The same study found that on average it takes a person 64 seconds to recover from email interruption and an estimated 20% productivity increase can be gained by addressing information overload in a business.
One of the ways of reducing the stress and time consumption of emails is allocating two slots in a day to look at emails.
The rest of the day can be spent focusing on work. This may be a little more difficult if you are working in virtual teams or in global organisations.
American author and entrepreneur, Tim Ferris, advocates streamlining the email process even more.
He says emails can also be reduced by using alternative communication tools, outsourcing some jobs, and finding automation processes for some matters.
The bottom line is emails are here to stay, social media platforms are increasing and the only way to claim our own time is finding a way to manage this.
