My number one gripe about work emails
For many of us, the extreme level of connectivity we experience at work is stress inducing.
My greatest pet hate in the office is the Reply All button, used by colleagues indiscriminately for matters barely relevant to even one of the recipients, let alone all of them.
The worst offender is the person who replies all just to say "thanks". No capitalisation. No full stop. Just a single word, almost always directed to a solitary individual but with everyone else unnecessarily copied in.
Granted, their intentions are usually good, and I'm no doubt being petty and difficult, but still, it's my truth.
Maybe you can relate. If so, it's probably because you're aware employees send and receive an average of 122 emails a day and that almost a third of our time is spent doing nothing but managing the darn things. So any additional email, particularly if it serves no purpose at all, is an unwelcome interruption that disrupts productivity and concentration.
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Actually, even when it's necessary, even if it's relevant, even then it's an interruption. There are multiple times throughout the day, for example, when I'll step away from my laptop for just half an hour and then I'll haltingly log back on, nervous the mess I cleaned up only minutes earlier will have returned, this time on steroids. With rare variation, that's exactly what occurs, like stubborn dust on a mantelpiece.
When there's a slow trickle, there's no issue staying on top of them, but often they're a rapid-fire succession of messages, each one an implicit demand that you reply or delete.
It's clearly not just email that's a problem. With the proliferation of instant online messaging tools, such as Skype, Flock and Slack, we're rarely able to remain uncontactable these days; always within reach of whoever needs us most. And for many of us, that extreme level of connectivity is stress inducing.
Of course, it's possible to switch off the email system – to reserve an hour or two in the diary as uninterrupted work time – and admittedly some of this is self-inflicted. It's common these days to be addicted to jumping on emails as quickly as we can, like users of smartphones who unthinkingly prioritise staring at screens than at faces.
It's a bit like this skit from I Love Lucy in which the eponymous star has a new job at a factory. Her task is simply to wrap little pieces of candy. At first it's easy but suddenly the conveyor belt speeds up such that it's impossible to keep up with the volley of chocolates coming her way. Mayhem ensues.
It's an apt metaphor for workplace emails. When there's a slow trickle, there's no issue staying on top of them, but often they're a rapid-fire succession of messages, each one an implicit demand that you reply or delete.
My greatest pet hate in the office is the Reply All button.
That kind of scenario, as well as the statistics mentioned earlier in this article, intrigued European researchers who recently conducted a study of 174 employees, with their findings now published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior. The employees had their workdays analysed every day for a week. The results that emerged are simultaneously surprising and unsurprising.
Let's begin with the unsurprising, which replicated what I've noted above. The prevalence of online messages is enough to put people into a bad mood since each interruption drags their focus away from their primary task (that is, to get work done), thereby generating "distress and irritation". That can be attributed to intense feelings of time pressure and a perception their workload has increased.
In contrast, the surprising part of the researchers' findings was that these interruptions also have a positive effect because when employees reply to emails, often immediately, they derive a sense of fulfilment. Dealing with these messages might not be their main area of responsibility but replying to them still generates a level of satisfaction because it feels as though they're getting stuff done.
Although precisely what that "stuff" entails is obviously somewhat questionable.
- Sydney Morning Herald
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