|
Re: your pointless email
Are you wasting hours of your time sending and
managing too much worthless email? Jane Perrone provides ten top
tips for how to stay on message
Wednesday July 23, 2003
Pointless email messages are costing UK businesses
millions of pounds a year, according to new research by business
writing consultants Emphasis.
It's not a surprising conclusion, considering that Emphasis makes
a living teaching employees how to make effective use of email.
But there's little doubt that for many workers email has become
a preoccupation that distracts them from the job in hand. As Emphasis
senior consultant Robert Ashton puts it:
"Just because email is free, that doesn't
mean it's cheap."
So how does one navigate the minefield of workplace
email communication? After more than a decade of using email, I
have established my personal email diktat:
1. Think before you send every email: would it
be quicker, more efficient, and more friendly to phone or even walk
over to the person and talk to them in person?
2. If you're emailing Doris in accounts, don't
cc your message to everyone in the company just so you can share
your razor-sharp witticism about P60 forms with 200 people. It wastes
bandwidth (a measure of the amount of data that can be transmitted
by your email network at any time), clogs up other peoples inboxes
and ultimately, isn't that funny. In fact, people will hate you
for it.
3. Don't let your email inbox overflow. Try to
deal with every email as soon as possible by responding to the message,
deleting it, flagging it for attention later or filing it away.
4. Don't send email attachments unless you absolutely
have to. They eat up bandwidth and often can't be opened by other
people. Could you place the document on a server that everyone can
access or add the text to the body of the email instead?
5. Don't forward every "hilarious" jpeg/virus
warning/chain letter you receive from friends to everyone in your
address book. If it's a virus warning it's probably a hoax, and
if it's that funny, most people will already have seen it. If you
must, limit your forwards to a few close friends and clearly mark
your email as frivolous spam in the subject line. People will begin
ignoring every email that you send - including the important ones
- if you bombard them with spam.
6. Always include an informative subject line in
your email: this helps your colleagues to locate it in their inbox
and gives them an idea of how important it is, so they can read
the message marked "your pay rise" before the one called
"has anyone seen my X Files mouse mat?"
7. Try to avoid bitching about colleagues to other
members of staff via emails: the old adage applies: if you wouldn't
write it on a postcard, don't write it in an email. Many firms monitor
staff email usage and you never know when someone could be reading
messages over your shoulder. And it is all to easy to hit the reply
button rather than forward and end up sending your rant to the very
person you are moaning about.
8. Before you fire off an angry email to someone,
save the message on draft and take half an hour (or a day if you're
really angry) to let yourself cool down. Then take another look
at the message and decide whether to send or delete it.
9. Make every email you send count: don't rush
a message off in 10 seconds. Spelling mistakes, sloppy grammar and
half-formed sentences make you look slapdash. Having said that,
each company has its own unwritten rules about the degree of formality
required in electronic communications: work out what they are and
follow them.
10. And finally, be forgiving of colleagues' email
faux pas. If a colleague sends you an email that you deem to be
rude, just remember that tone is completely lost in electronic communications,
and it may be that they were trying to be funny or simply rushed
off a message in a moment of anger and instantly regretted it.
|
