Today’s guest writer is David Grossman, consultant, speaker, author, one of America’s foremost authorities on communication inside organizations, and founder and CEO of The Grossman Group, a Chicago-based communications consultancy focusing on organizational consulting, strategic leadership development and internal communications for Fortune 500 clients.  

Workplace email. We love it, we hate it.

It’s the most commonly used communication tool in virtually every organization today. Yet as leaders we know all too well the serious ramifications of electronic messaging overload for both individuals and our organizations: increased stress, reduced productivity and efficiency, impacts on work-life balance and so much more.

Consider this:

• • 107 trillion emails were sent in 2010 – averaging out to 294 billion emails sent every day (Pingdom.com)
  • 50 emails in an inbox is the tipping point for information overload for the average user (Harris Interactive)

We see and hear about it every day but as leaders, what can you do?

Globally, some companies are implementing email black-outs, or even eliminating it altogether, to try to reduce the number of electronic messages employees receive. Yet the results of our newly released research, the 2012 Work-related Email Perception Study, show these strategies are misguided – employees want bad e-mail behaviors addressed, and they want to keep email as a tool.

Our findings were striking. Across audiences:

• • A significant majority see email as an effective and necessary communication tool – 84 percent of executives, 83 percent of middle managers and 77 percent of employees
  • A small minority believe limiting email outside of business hours would be very effective – 11 percent of executives, 20 percent of middle managers and 13 percent of employees
  • Even fewer see limiting email during regular business hours as being very effective – 8 percent of executives, 15 percent of middle managers, and 11 percent of employees

So, what do employees want from leaders? They want policies to address the massive amount of irrelevant electronic mail they get each day because it’s costing them and their organizations time, and middle managers are carrying a particularly large portion of the burden.

Our research found the average middle manager spends 6,000 minutes – 2.5 full work weeks – on irrelevant email every year. Irrelevant email is also sapping the time and productivity of supervisors (5,250 minutes – more than 2 full work weeks) and of employees (4,250 minutes – nearly 2 work weeks).

Multiply those hours by the number of managers, supervisors and employees in your organization and you’ll get to a very large number.

4 step approach to dealing with email overload

Using a smart, four-step approach, you can better understand how email stress is affecting your organization and begin to improve the effectiveness of this important communication tool:

Establish the baseline of email overload. Build an understanding of what bad email behaviors affect your employees, sap productivity and create stress.

Build alignment on communication guidelines that fit with your organizational culture. Set expectations for how and when email should be used. For example, agree on the need (or lack thereof) to reply to emails outside of normal working hours.

Lead by example. As a leader, it is critical that you reinforce the email behaviors you expect of others.

Provide training for employees and help them identify their own bad email behavior. Through light humor you can get your message across in a memorable, actionable way, without pointing fingers.

With a consistent, solution oriented approach you can help employees at all levels better understand how email – and other electronic forms of communication – can work most effectively. Along with it, you’ll drive better communications overall, including face-to-face and voice-to-voice communications, improving productivity and understanding, and reducing unnecessary stress.

Image credit:  morgueFile.com