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E-mail free Friday to encourage verbal communication |
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Score
63%
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14 votes,
Feasibility
75%
Originality
55%
Humour
53% |
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The Problem:
Lack of interaction in the workplace
The Social Invention:
Companies in the UK are now introducing ‘e-mail free Fridays’ to try and reduce the amount of unnecessary material being sent out, and to foster greater interaction between employees. E-mail has swiftly become the staple means of communication in the workplace, but this has had a downside: overloading of servers, overloading of people with information, reduced face-to-face interactions between employees, and reduced productivity.
A recent survey in the UK revealed that 80 per cent of workers use e-mail politically to cover their backs, while a third admitted to using e-mail to avoid resolving a difficult situation face-to-face or over the phone. It is also common knowledge that up to half of all e-mails sent by workers are jokes, quizzes, forwards from friends, etc, which have become known to some in the communications world as ‘productivity viruses’ for obvious reasons. The e-mail free Friday is an attempt to address these problems, all of which are steadily increasing, by banning e-mail communication on that day, forcing employees to take a different approach and to use their time more appropriately.
An e-mail ban begins to build a culture of designing and delivering ideas togetherNestlé Rowntree was the first company in the UK to introduce such a policy, after management were informed that employees were spending more time typing than talking to each other; they also found examples of people sending e-mails to colleagues who were just a small distance across from them, rather than actually speaking to them directly.
As Andrew Harrison, marketing director at the company, points out, “A no-email Friday removes needless information flow across the organisation and it forces people to talk face-to-face and agree plans mutually. An e-mail ban begins to build a culture of designing and delivering ideas together”.
The idea also grew out of more well-known ‘dress-down Fridays’, where employees are encouraged to dress in more casual clothes at the end of the week. More recently, Camelot (who run the National Lottery) and the BBC have also experimented with the concept.
The Friday ban also reduces the pressure on employees to spend time responding to everything that flows in to their inbox, and can enable them to escape the pressures of what work analysts have identified as ‘information overload’ associated with many e-mails. It is anticipated that 35 billion e-mails will be sent every day by the year 2005, and having policies in place to make sure the benefits of e-mail outweigh the disadvantages will be increasingly important for all organisations, big and small.
While some might not wish to go as far as Nestlé (or Computer Associates, who actually shut down their systems for an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon to prevent gossiping), placing a ban on all non-essential e-mails, or drawing up guidelines of what should and should not be sent by e-mail, will be things considered by all companies.
There is also a great deal that can be done by individuals, and Karl Cushing at Computer Weekly gives ten top tips for better e-mail usage:
1) Keep e-mails short and to the point, and use subject lines properly
2) Re-read the message before sending to ensure it is relevant and clear
3) Use the ‘cc’ and ‘bcc’ functions appropriately: does that person really need to be copied in on this e-mail?
4) Never add an attachment unless it has been requested and always include the information in the body of the e-mail where possible
5) When attaching Word documents, do so in the ‘rtf’ (rich text file) format to remove any scripts and macros
6) Compress large files before sending as attachments
7) Never reply to spam, under any circumstances
8) Archive e-mails effectively and realistically, keeping only the ones that are truly relevant
9) Avoid overuse of the ‘High Priority’ or ‘Urgent’ labelling of
e-mails, because it loses its value or meaning
10) Ensure that the person has the necessary application to open the attachment you are sending (and ensure the file has no viruses)
Summarised from a variety of articles on the internet, including pieces from Computer Weekly (www.computerweekly.com), Irish Jobs (www.irishjobs.ie), CNN (www.cnn.com) and the Guardian (www.guardian.co.uk; Media section). See also www.internet-free-day.org
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