Email & Productivity

By Stephanie Jordan
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According to IT research firm Gartner, non-work-related Internet surfing results in an estimated 40 percent productivity loss each year for American businesses. While the Web surfing productivity drain is a loss to the company, there is another less talked about productivity drain that can directly hurt individual employees: the email inbox.

Marsha Egan, CEO of The Egan Group, Inc. — an executive and life coaching firm — is the author of Inbox Detox and the Habit of E-mail Excellence, a book that helps employees and executives examine and improve their email habits to save time and increase productivity. Egan challenges workers (and businesses) to admit that they have poor email habits.

“Email is a very effective communication tool upon which businesses rely heavily,” says Egan. “However, we have developed a dependency on email that saps productivity. Many people can’t keep up with their inbox and simply declare email bankruptcy.”

Egan points to statistics that show many employees check work email over weekends and while on vacation. “It’s clear that in the new decade, email users must take control their email before it controls them,” she declares. Egan asserts that between reading, responding, and recovery time, the average email interruption takes four minutes of valuable work time. “If a worker receives an average of 15 email interruptions per day, one hour of time is lost to email interruptions. If that worker is part of a 20-person department, 20 hours of work time are lost per day. Then, if the employees average $20 USD per hour, the company loses $2000 USD per week due to a loss of worker productivity.”

Egan believes that without healthy email habits, the problems will only get worse. While seemly simple, there are a few steps that Egan recommends:

Place the main point, assignment, or request in the first two lines of the email. People have a tendency to build up to a conclusion when they write. At times, this habit makes it very difficult for email readers to figure out what the main issue or request is. By putting your main point in the first two sentences, you can avoid misinterpretations and get readers focused on exactly what you want, right from the get-go.

Keep emails short. When you send short, easy-to-read messages, people will respond in the same manner and you save incredible amounts of time sorting through your inbox.

Send less email. While this may seem a no-brainer, email begets email. Consider your alternatives. In many cases, it is better and easier to pick up the phone, visit the would-be recipient’s desk, or simply not respond.

“There is a cure for our current email e-ddiction,” Egan says. “If you practice productive email habits, you will not only loosen the grip email has on you, but you will also reclaim hours of productive time every day.”

More on increasing email productivity can be found on her website and her blog.

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Eye on Messaging is written by Stephanie Jordan, editor in chief of Messaging News. If you have story ideas or news to share, email her: sjordan [at] messagingnews [dot] com

Published February 24, 2010