Spam, no thanks. Everyone hates spam emails; they are annoying and serve no other purpose but to increase the wealth of spammers. Unfortunately, we all create spam - mostly unaware of it. Emails are a good tool that helps informing people on subject matters, but informing and "generating corporate spam" are two very different animals. Simple measures reduce corporate email traffic by up to 30 percent, while increasing organization's effectiveness and making everybody's life easier.
Some topics concern many employees and keeping them informed is paramount for a well working organization. Nothing is wrong with addressing them all at once in an email. Emails are an excellent way to distribute information simultaneously - given, the content does indeed provide relevant information.
Finding answers and agreements requires often preceding inquiries and discussions with others. Emails can just be the right tool for this. It is however unnecessary to list everyone who possibly could be interested in the subject on the initial, inquiring email. Good business practice is discussing the subject just with the people who know the answer or can contribute to it, and once the result is available, distributing the relevant information to all people who it concerns. This simple measure reduces corporate email traffic easily by 10-20 percent.
Do we always need to "reply to all"? This is obviously not the case. Well, it is never wrong to let managers and colleagues know how "pro-active" one is, so does this not ask to cc them all when raising a topic or responding to an email? No again, the best way to "impress" people is to provide solutions and results. Furthermore, there is really no need to reply to all when thanking a colleague by email. Use the "reply to all" button as infrequently as possible. Corporate spam, no thanks.
Read and delivery acknowledgment requests can be very helpful. They inform the sender about delivery of an email or that the recipient has opened it. They offer however no guarantee that the recipient has actually read the email. Acknowledgment requests are for the occasional email that is of utmost importance. Receiving them permanently is simply annoying. Email client software can be difficult to understand, particularly for people who are not so IT-savvy, but colleagues or IT support will gladly help to disable this setting. Other people may feel that their emails are always of greatest importance, and ask for acknowledgments by default. These people need to understand, that what they do is simply spamming, doubling their email traffic by 100 percent, an unnecessary burden on the addressees.
Simple measures and a little bit of team spirit can make a huge difference in email communication. We all have to handle a huge workload, and our inboxes fill up daily. Reducing unnecessary email traffic allows us concentrating on important tasks and providing results more quickly. This is to everyone's benefit. Spam, no thanks - relevant information, yes please.
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