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Email bullying?
In the USA, October is national prevent bullying month. We do not appear to have anything similar in the UK which is a shame especially as there have been a few cases of young people committing suicide through feeling bullied on Facebook etc.
Email too can easily be used to bully people. For example leaving insufficient time to reply, constantly sending email reminders and demands. Sending rude, arrogant and abrasive emails can be stressful too for the recipient. Attaching read receipt and reminder flags might also be deemed bully tactics. Such harassment is a drain on productivity as found previously. Perhaps the most serious form of email bullying is expecting people to reply too quickly and often outside acceptable working hours. Moreover, email bullying adds to the email overload and hence stress levels.
Any form of bullying is to be deplored and is unacceptable. Social technologies and email have just made it easier to do in a hidden and often covert manner. Deleting and/or ignoring such emails is not an option.
VW recently stopped sending email to workers Blackberrys thirty minutes after their shift ended. That is taking a sledge hammer to crack a nut.
At Mesmo Consultancy we have found a more informed a sustainable solution is to implement a proper email management code of conduct and email best practice charter. It should contain both what is acceptable email behaviour and the procedure if you are on the receiving end of email bullying.
Have you ever been bullied by email? Does your organisation have such an email management code of conduct?
Tags: corporate email etiquette, email best practice, email bullying, email management, email response times, email stress, Mesmo Consultancy
Can Instant Messaging (IM) help to significantly reduce email overload? Over the last few months I’ve been working remotely with a client and using their IM in earnest (via Microsoft Communicator). I was able to catch up with colleagues on business and social matters quickly and without ending up with an inbox full of redundant email chains.
At one point urgent help was needed from a colleague whose status was ‘busy’. A quick message and back came the necessary data with a note that all the other matters would need to wait until our planned conference call later that week. Still the vital data was supplied and work could progress.
Would the same have happened with email? No, as he is a strict disciple of the ‘stay focused’ management school. His new email alerts are off and he only checks his inbox every couple of hour or so. He works on the basis that if it is urgent someone will either call or send him an IM.
Email has been around for just over 30 years and is now seen by many as the default communications channel. But is it really that useful for all electronic communications? Mimecast found only about 30% of emails received are read. Meanwhile the Grossman Group found that middle managers are overwhelmed by email and often spend long hours outside work catching up with their email. But what are all these emails they feel they must read or at least spend time deleting)? We and Grossman found that about 25 to 30% are indeed trivial often either chains (ongoing conversations) or about subjects that are no longer relevant (eg fire alarm is being tested at 11.00am).
Email is but one of a range of communications channels (from face-to-face meetings to text messaging). Is it time to start thinking through how we can use alternatives to email firstly to communicate more efficiently and hence secondly reduce the email overload which is crippling many people and their businesses? Have you checked recently how much time you and your business are loosing through unnecessary (internal junk) email?
For me IM is hugely undervalued as a communications tools. If I were CEO of an organisation (no matter what size) I would not ban email internally as some have done but would implement an IM policy.
All message which do not need to be retained and are time sensitive should be sent by IM and not email as per this matrix.
Are you using any form of social media and IM to reduce the volume of email traffic and improve communications? Click here to participate in our new survey.
Tags: alternatives to email, email chains, email management, email overload, IM, Mesmo Consultancy
Managing change follows the same seven step process show below no matter what you try to change – from the simple, moving desks to the more complesx, changing email behavior.
Tags: email best practice, email management, email overload, email stress
Little wonder we suffer from chronic email overload when you consider how much email is flying around and how short is out attention spam. This blog was prompted by those of two esteemed colleagues (Michael Osterman and Marsha Egan) and our recent survey on expectations of fast response.
Just how much email traffic is flowing around? Here is some recent data from a mixture of resources including our own data and that of Radicati’s new email survey.
Little wonder many feel chained to their inbox. They must check and answer each email as it arrives rather than wait and take a more measured less stressful approach.
We can easily change our own email behaviour. Changing that of others is harder. Last week’s tips focused on changing the organisations email culture. More again this week in the light of these figures.
Do you feel overload and stressed by the volume of email and unrealistic expectations about how quickly you will respond? How to you counter balance this ever faster pace of life and short attention spans?
Tags: email best practice, email management, email overload
Email etiquette – is it right to reprimand your future daughter in-law by email as in the latest email media disaster? In my opinion no on two accounts.
First, it was the wrong communications channel. Such messages should always be communicated by talking (whether they relate either to personal or work matters). Once you put something like this in an email and hit send you put down a marker which cannot be erased. Barriers are created and the tone of the relationship set. There is no such thing as ‘recalling’ an email because even if it was sent back the chances are the recipient read it before it was returned. This was very poor email etiquette.
Second, to me the content was rude, arrogant and dismissive. All of which creates as the media said the image of a ‘mother in-law from hell’. Is that how she wanted to be portrayed?
This underscores just how quickly and easily such emails go viral and create an email disaster. If the future mother in-law really could not bring herself to speak to her future daughter in-law an alternative would be a letter. This would not have gone viral quite so easily.
There is now a follow-up story which suggests it was all a publicity stunt to promote their business. However, this too represents appalling behaviour and creates a very unprofessional image. Furthermore such email hoaxes just drive up the email carbon footprint.
Good email etiquette is one of the keys to relationships between both individuals and businesses.
In my opinion this was the wrong use of email on all accounts. What’s your opinion?
Tags: email best practice, email etiquette, email management