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| Imagine it: banning email at the office. (Credit: Alamy) |
Clare Burge thought that she had a
good handle on her email, until she returned from a 10-day trip to Morocco in
2001 to find 10,000 new messages in her inbox. Stress took over her
post-holiday glow. Then in a moment of madness, as Burge called it, she
decided to embark on a one-year experiment: she would stop using email. She put
an automatic response on her personal and work email accounts that asked people
to call her instead. For Burge it was a life-changing moment.
Most office workers can relate to
Burge’s frustration with the constant flow of emails at all hours of the day
and night. Email can also have a direct impact on corporate bottom lines by
distracting workers from role relevant tasks to deal with unimportant messages.
Some researchers estimate that it takes 64 seconds to get back to work after
checking a new message and this can add up to lost hours every day.
Because of its drag on workplace
efficiency and worker wellbeing, email has come into the crosshairs of
corporate policies around the globe. The same year that Burge had her
breakthrough, Thierry Breton, CEO of French IT company Atos, announced a ban on
internal email for the company’s 80,000 employees.
Since then email bans have become
increasingly popular ways for companies to help employees maintain work-life
balance and boost their productivity. Blanket bans, however, can backfire,
warned Jim Harter, chief scientist of workplace management and well-being for
research firm Gallup.
“On the surface it might seem like
the right thing,” said Harter. “But companies have to look at the root cause of
what is making employees stressed.”
At Van Meter, an electric-parts
distributor in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in the US, tackling the issue of after-hours
email was one part of a more holistic program to improve company culture. About
10 years ago the company started measuring employee engagement and implementing
policies that improved work-life balance for employees.
Lura McBride, chief operating
officer of the 400 person company said you can tell people you want them to
have a work-life balance, but unless you are bringing in some hard-and-fast
strategies to tackle this then “you are just putting lip service to it”.
For McBride, the moment that changed
it all, was when she realized she had formed a habit of locking her car doors
when she pulled into her driveway in the evening to finish working while her
four kids were tapping on the car window.
McBride approached Van Meter’s
senior leadership team and suggested that they stop sending internal emails and
having calls on weekends and after 5:00 PM and before 07:00AM on weekdays.
McBride said the policy is more about respecting other people’s time, than
email itself. After all when people hear their inbox ping even in off hours,
they feel they must check the message to see if it’s important.
“Where I worked before, some people
wore it as a badge of honor that they sent emails at midnight,” she said. “When
I look back at that, it is embarrassing.”
Over time the policy became a part
of employees’ development plans. Now the company even shuts off employee email
during vacation. McBride said she and other employees still work evenings, but
if anyone has to write an email he or she shouldn’t send it until the next day
unless it is responding to a client issue or is time critical. When she gets a
non-urgent email after hours, she brings it up in person the next day.
Banning email as a first step was
easy, said Lee Mallon, founder of Rarely Impossible, a Bournemouth, UK, based IT
consulting firm. “I found myself checking my phone 150 times a day,” said
Mallon. Email had become “too much of a distraction and a constant annoyance”.
When he came in one day at the end
of 2014 and announced the no email decision without warning, his employees were
relieved.
“Before, email was a repository for all
communications, as well as interactions with clients and storing documents,” said
Mallon. “Now we use about four different products to put things in their
relevant form.”
Because it’s a small office, most
urgent issues that used to come up over email are now handled in person or with
a quick phone call or text. Staffers use Skype, Dropbox and Slack, an office messaging app, to
keep tabs on projects and share information.
“My team communicates much better,”
said Mallon, who estimates they’ve saved about 20% of the workday by getting
rid of email. “Now issues get solved right away.”
Burge believes an email free world
is still some time away. “I do still use email on a daily basis because I
haven’t converted all seven billion on the planet,” said Burge. “Until I have
gotten everyone to do this, I will still have to email people.”
