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Email overload will increase the risk of a breach of GDPR. Email overload and GDPR is like a red rage to a bull. Email management and compliance with GDPR starts at the individual user level. You can have all the organisational policies and technology infrastructures in place but if individuals are sloppy then there is a high and un-managed risk of breaching GDPR. It is not uncommon now for business executives and their PAs and EAs to be expected to handle over 100 emails per day. As business email overload continues to rage unabated so too the risk of making an error and sharing personal data by email which really should be kept private.
Whilst your organisation will have a GDPR policy and hopefully the relevant IT infrastructure, here are four ways every individual email user can help to improve compliance and protection of personal data.
How well are you training your staff about effective business email management and GDPR? Can you afford to pay up to 4% of turnover (or £17M) for breaching the new GDPR Act?
These are just four of at least ten ways you can mitigate the impact of email overload on GDPR
Call us now for more information about Mesmo Consultancy’s ‘Email Management and GDPR’ workshops and consultancy services.
Tags: Business email management, Business email overload, GDPR, Mesmo Consultancy
Email is over 30 years old and hasn’t changed that much since its inception. But over the years we have been letting 
it take over our lives. It started out as a basic electronic messaging system, and we now use it to communicate everything – from the simplest to the most complex messages. This blog reviews some of different approaches to managing email overload and their pros and cons, including inbox zero and the goldfish techniques.
Published in The Guardian November 2017
Tags: Business email management, Business email overload, inbox zero, Mesmo Consultancy
For the last five years, Inbox Zero was the holly grail for many who wanted to save time dealing with email. But did it really help and reduce email overload? Is your business email etiquette and social media footprint helping or hampering your chances of a new job? How quickly can you spot fake news? These are some of the topics we highlight for this month.
1. What is the best way to manage your inbox and email overload? Over the years many different approaches to email management have been touted as the salvation for everyone suffering from business email overload. These include Inbox zero which many pursued as the holy of grail of business email management. Now Merlin Mann its inventor doubts its effectiveness and suggest that it might indeed be a complete waste of time. So what are we left with, the sledge hammer or goldfish approaches? In this Guardian guest blog, Monica reviews the options.
2.Eight email (etiquette) mistakes which bug your colleagues. Adding kisses and emoticons, not including a greeting and informal content are just some of the things you might be doing with email which annoys your colleagues. This is what a recent study by CV-Library revealed. Sending emails well out-side normal office hours is also very annoying. None of this is new but these are also business email etiquette habits which might be costing you your next job (including when emailing recruitment companies).
Check your business email etiquette using the Mesmo Consultancy on-line analytical tool. It is so easy to fall into sloppy habits as we work under increasing time pressures. Make sure this is not happening to you and that your business email etiquette is not jeopardising your next job. For more tips see the Mesmo Business Email Etiquette video the Five S Formula for Writing Effective Emails.
3. Deep clean your internet activity. Yes, the first port of call for recruiters is often the internet. What will they find out about you? Old social media posts which you forgot to remove. One of us was recruiting for a CEO. After finding information about a potential candidate they phoned a business associate who might know more. Yes, you guessed, the candidate did not make it past the first round. You cannot remove all the content for example reputable news content. However, you can clean up your social media posts as this article explains.
4. Corporate leaders: keep your Yammering in check. It is not just the Millenials and Snowflakes that need to be mindful of what they post on the web. CEOs too can sometimes wreak havoc with their posts as Jean- Sébastien Jacques CEO of Rio Tinto found. It is easy to get carried away by the ease of posting and one’s own self-importance. In the process as Mr Jacques and others have found they can reveal too much personal information and sensitive data which causes mayhem. On the other hand there is a line of thought which says there is no such thing as bad publicity. It’s a very fine dividing line as these articles have demonstrated and which need treading with great care and attention.
5. Spotting fake news. Pre the web, we used to say there are lies and dam lies. We were taught to study the statistics used and look for inconsistencies etc. Whilst this is still a vital skill, the challenge is how to spot news on social media which is fake. Here is an excellent concise guide on how to do it.
Tags: business email etiquette, Business email overload, Fake News, inbox zero, Mesmo Consultancy, Millenials, Snowflakes, The Guardian, Yammer
What would you rather have – a good night’s sleep or win the lottery? Choose the former to improve your well-being and happiness (and reduce business email overload). Sleep is now recognised as one, if not the main, contributor to our well-being. This is according to the latest survey from National Centre for Social Research. When you are rested, your self-esteem is higher, you are more relaxed and perform more effectively. This is also what sports psychologists have found when preparing sportsmen and women for big events.
What has this to do with reducing business email overload? Ironically, the blue light from those beloved mobile devices has been found to be the most significant cause of a poor night’s sleep. The two key reasons being:
Despite the growing body of research showing how checking emails etc late at night is detrimental to our well-being, the perennial comment in workshops is: ‘my colleagues/boss work in a different time zone and I need to be available’.
Stress and mental health are key areas of concern for most organisations. Business email overload and the constant distraction from digital alerts remain amongst the top ten stressors. This is due to many factors including:
During the recent Overload 2017 webinar speakers such as Lawrence Ampofo and Dan Calisata highlighted ways to create a healthier digital communications culture. For example, using mindfulness and setting boundaries outside which people are not expected to be available. You cannot change culture in isolation but you can start to influence other people’s behaviour and question theirs when they expect you to violate normality. Once you start to make improvements then is the time to collect data to use to develop a business case for changing the wider email culture (perhaps just across your division).
Doing nothing to reduce business email overload is simply not an option these days. Not only will it ultimately damage your personal health it will deter others from working in the organisation and especially ‘Millenials’ and ‘Snowflakes’. Both expect more life-work balanced organisations. They do not see a job for life and if the organisational culture does not suit they will move elsewhere.
Here are seven ways to improve the quality of your sleep – yet stay on top of your inbox and reduce business email overload.
It can be hard to switch off, one way is to start by creating digital-free time during the day. For example, at meal times and whilst shopping. Then build-up so that ultimately you have a digital-free day over the weekends.
Other resources to help you include:
If you (or your team) need more help reducing business email overload whilst improving well-being and productivity, email or phone us now.
What are your top tips for improving the quality of your sleep?
Tags: Business email overload, Digital devices and sleep, Email and sleep deprivation, Mesmo Consultancy
If you didn’t action an email, whose fault is it? Probably the sender because they put your name in the wrong email address line. This is part of a series of videos on Business Email Etiquette and Management from Mesmo Consultancy.
It focuses on:
This is part of a series on smart business email management and etiquette. It is one of the topics we cover in Mesmo Consultancy’s Smart Email Management Masterclasses. Contact us now for more information.
This is an Ellie Styles production. See https://ellie-stiles.myportfolio.com/
Tags: bcc, business email etiquette, Business email management, Mesmo Consultancy, Reply All, To versus Cc