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.

1: I am currently out at a job interview and will reply to you if I fail to get the position. Be prepared for my mood.
2: I’m not really out of the office. I’m just ignoring you.
3: You are receiving this automatic notification because I am out of the office. If I was in, chances are you wouldn’t have received anything at all.
4: Sorry to have missed you but I am at the doctors having my brain removed so that I may be promoted to management.
5: I will be unable to delete all the unread, worthless emails you send me until I return from vacation on 18/4. Please be patient and your mail will be deleted in the order it was received.
6: Thank you for your email. Your credit card has been charged $5.99 for the first ten words and $1.99 for each additional word in your message.
7: The e-mail server is unable to verify your server connection and is unable to deliver this message. Please restart your computer and try sending again.  (The beauty of this is that when you return, you can see how many people did this over and over).

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Which of these would you like to be able to achieve at work:

Be less reactive

Be less focused on your Inbox and more focused on your plans and goals

Plan, prioritise and schedule work to do

Have fewer interruptions in your day

Teach your computer to sort your emails the way you want them sorted

Prioritise emails

Quickly and easily collaborate with colleagues

Have a central shared contact database

Design your contact database to suit your needs

Until Judy Gleeson showed my team what we could do using Outlook, I thought it was just an email package. Wow. Are we ever more organised now and on top of our workload.  The Tasks alone made the time we spent with Judy worthwhile.  The Executive Assistants were rapped in the calendar functions they were shown - and they though that they knew it all already. Judy’s style is relaxed yet passionate, and she’s exceptionally good at cutting to the chase and teaching what we need to know and how to apply it to our work.

Quickly access background information about key people

Send personalised, merged emails to chosen contacts (more…)

It happens to all of us: we have a few days off work or a day stuck in meetings.  When we get back to our Inbox it has so many emails in it that it looks like an insurmountable task to get it under control.

Take yesterday for example.  I went skiing instead of working. Yes skiing in Australia (about 3 hours drive from home). Nice work-life balance going on here.  The Doctor prescribes work-life balance to patients as well as self-prescribing it.  Anyway, it was a lovely day skiing: sunny, great snow, beautiful views, hardly any people so no lift queues.  I had a lovely time.  I didn’t think about work. I didn’t think about the emails piling up in my Inbox.  That’s because I use some clever functions in Outlook to help me manage my email.

I use the Rules and Alerts function to file some emails (newsletters, magazines, media bulletins etc), the Out Of Office Assistant to respond to incoming email and advise the sender that there are other people who can help them while I am out of the office. On top of that, some incoming emails are automatically categorised, some change colour.  I even have Rules that I can apply after reading the emails. For example, all emails in my Inbox with the words soccer or TUFC in them, move to the Soccer folder.

As you can see, my software helps me file as well. I hope you have yours set up to help you as well. For all its foibles, Microsoft Outlook is a handy and very powerful tool!

The Desk Doctors view is that how we learn many of our IT skills is ridiculous.  Just plain ridiculous.  We’re too busy or stingy to go on a course. Too impatient to read the manual.  Or worse still, many of the tools we use do not have a manual.

All too often we learn a new software skill by accidentally watching whilst a colleague does something in half as many steps as it would take you. Flabbergasted you then splutter, “How did you do that? Show me again.” 

On your first few days in a new job, someone tries to show you how the “systems” work.  They explain where to file and how to name your new documents.  They usually tell you once. (more…)