The number of e-mails you as a manager receive increases and increases, and the time you have to spend sorting, reading and answering goes up with it. E-mail handling is becoming a bigger and bigger part of your everyday life. Some researchers even report that up to 40 % of a working day is spent with emails. Forty percent!
But where are all these emails coming from? Who is sending them? Who's fault is it? Research actually shows that it is you! Every time you send an email, the problem escalates. Fortunately, this also means that you can become part of the solution.
A study published in the Harvard Business Review in 2013 (“To Reduce E-Mails, Start at the Top” by Chris Brown, Andrew Killick and Karen Renaud) concluded that if we send fewer emails, we receive fewer emails . Logic for caged hens – when you get the hang of it!!
A team of researchers investigated the e-mail habits of an 80-person company. On average, each member of the 7-person management team sent 56 emails per day. They set out to reduce the number of emails sent with 20%.
The researchers asked the company's management team to:
The management team received weekly feedback on their progress and reduced the amount of emails sent by a whopping 54 %! Even more interesting, however, is that the employees followed suit - and that without having received similar instructions. In fact, the amount of emails the rest of the staff sent was reduced by a whopping 64 %.
For the company in question (with 80 employees in total), this meant a saving of 10,400 man-hours per year. Which corresponds to an increase in productivity of 7 %.
If we all send fewer emails, we'll have time for more of the fun.
How to send fewer emails
Read more:
How to write a persuasive email >
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