Managing “emails”

Developed by Daniel Rohrer Hansen- s173922

Abstract

Email Management generally refers to the systems and methods an employee can implement to make become more efficient when it comes to handling the abundance of email received every day. Email management is a method for increasing email efficiency while reducing the negative effects that email handling can have on an individual's productivity and job satisfaction. In the workplace, inadequate email management may waste a significant amount of an employee's time, as well as obstruct other employees, and have a detrimental influence on the firm as a whole. Email processing can take up more than 30% of an employee's workday, and if handling patterns aren't streamlined, it might be much more.

Background

The very first version of what we now know as email was invented in 1965 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) This was a part of the university’s Compatible Time-Sharing System, which allowed users to share files and messages on a central disk . Today about 333.2 billion emails are sent every day (https://earthweb.com/how-many-emails-are-sent-per-day/) and the average office worker receives about 121 emails and sends about 40 emails for business purposes everyday day (https://www.outlooktracker.com/news/how-many-emails-does-the-average-office-worker-receive/). In total it is estimated to exists about 5.59 billion active email accounts worldwide (https://www.outlooktracker.com/news/how-many-emails-does-the-average-office-worker-receive/). Even though many organizations worldwide are benefitting from using email to communicate, research shows that the abundance of mail also can be a course for stress among employees. Multiple studies carried out (https://profjackson.com/email-stress/) indicating that a majority of people have increased stress levels related to email stressors, such as email overload.

Importance of Email management

Both form a health perspective and a financial perspective it can be very important to understand email management. from outlooktracker it is estimated that people in workplaces on average 3.1 hours spend a day sending and hacking their emails alone(https://www.outlooktracker.com/news/office-workers-spend-a-shocking-20-weeks-per-year-on-their-emails/), as well as a 200-strong workforce on the UK minimum wage, is estimated to pay its staff £1.2m every year for reading and sending emails (https://www.outlooktracker.com/news/office-workers-spend-a-shocking-20-weeks-per-year-on-their-emails/). Studies also show that approximately 92% of employees have elevated blood pressure and heart rate when they are handling emails at work were constantly checking emails as well as having unread emails serve as a stress factor. (https://nordic-it.com/5-facts-email-often-cause-stress/). With better Email management work efficiency will increase as well as the overall mental health of workers.

Challanges and solutions

Common challenges of email management:

• Volume handling
• Sorting in what is important and what is not (spam)
• Storage and expenditure
• Over-checking emails

Ways to manage emails:

• Limiting the number of times you process mail in a day.
• Limiting the amount of time you dedicate to processing email in a given session.
• Only keeping your email program open while you are actively dealing with it.
• Checking email only when you are going to process it.
• Deleting as many messages as possible immediately.
• Responding immediately to messages that can be answered very briefly.
• Moving messages to be dealt with later to a separate folder.
• Responding to only emails that require responses.
• Limiting recipients to as few individuals as possible.
• Keeping responses brief.
• Deleting all messages that are not archived after a specific amount of time.

Software that can help with the handling of Emails

MGI’s estimates suggest that by fully implementing social technologies, companies have an opportunity to raise the productivity of interaction workers—high-skill knowledge workers, including managers and professionals—by 20 to 25 percent. (https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-telecommunications/our-insights/the-social-economy)

Limitations

Unfortunately it is not possible to have a fully automated system for handling emails duo to the inconsistent nature of emails contents but there are ways to make answering emails more streamlined and increase the quality

Annotated Bibliography

Following references may be beneficial for further reading on topic addressed in this article.