Email is a great time-saver, but…

Email should enhance, not replace, personal communication in business. Don’t use it to create a wall between you and your staff or to skirt around issues that should be tended to immediately. Keep the usual lines of communication open, including telephone calls and personal contact.

Email should enhance, not replace, personal communication in business. Don’t use it to create a wall between you and your staff or to skirt around issues that should be tended to immediately. Keep the usual lines of communication open, including telephone calls and personal contact.

Some things simply shouldn’t be handled by email. You wouldn’t use it to discipline employees, deliver bad news and communicate confidential information or anything else that you would not want to be seen by others. As Nancy Friedman, known as the Telephone Doctor, says, “You are better off not putting anything in email that you wouldn’t want in tomorrow’s newspaper.”

One thing that email should be used for is to give praise, according to Marilynne Ruddick and Leslie O’Flahaven, in their article, E-mail for Good, Not Evil (T D, May 2001). Certainly nobody would mind if those emails fall into the hands of the public!

Email is replacing most day-to-day correspondence and memos. As such, it should reflect good grammar, clarity and brevity. Put the important information in the header and first paragraph and make sure you tell the readers the action that you want them to take. Where possible, discuss only one topic per email and stay clear of ambiguous abbreviations and confusing emoticons.

There is little doubt that email is a timesaver. It takes about 30 minutes to write and send a business letter compared to the five minutes it takes to write and send an equivalent email message, according to Jonathan Whaler’s book, E-mail @ Work. However, email can also be a time-waster to others if they receive unneeded and unwanted information. Don’t be tempted to send information to people simply because it’s easy to do so. And don’t send copies to others unless you know that they need it.

Helen Buttigieg, president of We Organize U in Oakville, Ontario, suggests that if you begin writing an email but don’t have time to finish it, save it in your outbox. But initially, address it to yourself, so if it happens to be sent accidentally, the unfinished email comes to you, not to a major client. Quality emails reflect quality companies.

Manage your incoming email as well. Most users look at their messages as soon as they receive them, continual interruptions such as those play havoc with your effectiveness. Have set times to review your email, like first thing in the morning and again after lunch. Delete obvious spam email without opening them. The headers reveal a lot about the content.

Generally, the same principles apply to electronic mail as hard copy mail when it comes to dispensing it. Once you have scheduled time to handle it, do it, delegate it, delete it, file it or arrange for it to be done later. It’s important to control your inbox. Lindsay Marler, a professional organizer with Chaotic Consultation in Toronto, allows a maximum number of emails to remain in her inbox. She slots 10 minutes a day to sort and discard any old or confirmed mail and directs them into appropriate folders. Items requiring follow-up are then red flagged.

Email is on the increase and although it can be a great time-saver, if mismanaged, it can also be a time-waster. Consider having a consultant or professional organizer review your current procedures and guidelines to ensure that everyone in the organization is using it as effectively as possible.

Professional Organizers in Canada, an association of consultants who specialize in organizing homes and offices, including electronic filing systems, can be reached through their website at www.organizersincanada.com. In the U.S., you can contact the National Association of Professional Organizers at www.napo.net.

If we don’t take action to curb unnecessary email, we’ll have little time for anything else. According to Ferris Research Report (quoted at PC World.com) we will soon be spending four hours a day reading and answering an average of 50 work-related messages, and spam will occupy 40 per cent of our mailbox. Some people in my time management workshops are reporting figures close to this already. The time to take action is now.