An email policy is a crucial part of an effective organisation. Without guidelines about what should be done in the workplace, each person’s values drive their behaviour.  Their skill levels also come into play. Here are some real examples of what happens when there is no policy practiced:

a regional manager receives 500 emails per day, many are Reply to Alls from his own personnel.

85% of managers are CCd far too often.

Executive Assistants are groaning under the weight of emails they and their managers receive.

just under 7% of emails are sent without a subject line.

26% of email subject lines do not tell the reader anything useful.

corporate SPAM proliferates and causes anger between sections of the organisation.

emails from one section automatically deleted without opening as they send too much corporate SPAM.

only emails sent with the recipient’s name in the To… field are read.

emails sent to the whole organisation eg ALL STAFF list are ignored.

email overload causes many emails to be ignored and only read and acted on when the sender re-sends or calls, or angrily arrives at the workspace.

almost illiterate real estate property management staff sending 30 to 60 emails per week to clients about their investment properties. The grammar, spelling, tone and sentence structure were abysmal.

The potential for some really bad results are obvious. The stress on people working in an organisation where each individual has their own protocols of acceptable behaviour can be immense, overwhelming and cause procrastination (that just makes it worse). As well as anger, frustration and depression. If there’s no “right way” to do things, we each ”make it up” for ourselves”.  There’s conflict about whether others are doing things the right way and as no right way is communicated or agreed, we cannot do what’s expected of us.

Emails sent externally are another important aspect of having a policy.  There are issues like “when should someone else proof read an email to a client”, “when should I CC my manager in on a client’s problem or complaint”. Usually the least educated staff communicate the most with clients as we see in the real estate example.  So, to generalise a little, in large organisations, probably the least educated and often worst writers are writing to clients. And who is proof reading their emails? Mr Nobody.

No wonder email is such an emotive topic.  Without an email policy in place, the workplace is a lose-lose situation. Professionalism and corporate image degrade. Frustration and anger rise.