Why your company needs to limit email

Francis Wade, Contributor

The global carmaker, Volkswagen, recently decided to save some of its employees from the stress of 24-hours-a day-7-days-a-week connectivity by shutting down its BlackBerry servers after working hours.

On the next day at work, the system is turned back on and the flow of messages resumes just in time for employees to switch their attention back to the office.

There are husbands, wives, and children all over Jamaica who would cheer for joy if such a workplace policy were implemented.

Their hard-working and sorely missed spouse or parent would miraculously be available to them at home. Instead, they must suffer from the unspoken policy running many local companies - that you must be available to check and answer company email early in the morning, late at night, on weekends, during public holidays, and while you're on vacation, wherever in the world you might be.

While it's hard to find a company that actually has a written 24-7 policy, employees who refuse to play the game are taught the need to do so to get ahead.

When they join their colleagues in this game, it makes the problem worse, eroding the boundaries that are needed to live a balanced life and to operate at maximum productivity. It's a case of technology running ahead of common-sense practice, yet there are managers who criticise employees who don't play along.

Many executives argue that employees need to have 24-7 email access in order to contact their colleagues about important, time-sensitive matters. Just in case an urgent email is sent, one should be "on the ball" in order to answer it.

While this makes sense as a single reason, it utterly fails in practice for a number of reasons. The first is that email is simply too unreliable.

Research conducted in 2009 by Return Path showed that the email delivery rate in North America was only 79.3 per cent, and I imagine that this rate is lower here in Jamaica with our frequent blackouts and failures in Internet service.

The second reason to avoid email as a means to communicate urgent messages is that too many people fail to manage email well. The result can be tens of thousands of messages sitting in an in-box, which means that a critical, immediate message simply becomes one snowflake lost in a blizzard.

The final reason is perhaps the most compelling of all. Companies that force their employees to respond to urgent email enslave them to their smartphones, laptops and desktops.

It's a form of behaviour modification at its finest in which the fear of not answering quickly enough turns smart, capable workers into firefighters jumping into action at the sound of an alarm.

They instantly react to every buzz, beep, vibration, ping, and pop-up just in case something urgent is coming in.

Picture this: every employee in the company continuously scanning his or her email just in case an urgent message comes in. It represents a colossal waste of time.

A few companies even encourage their customers to use email in the same way. The same problem applies as customers who use this medium expect 100 per cent reliability and inevitably blame the company for email that never reaches its destination.

de facto policies

Instead, companies need to move away from these de facto policies and train customers and employees to avoid the use of email for urgent matters, especially when they are emotionally charged.

Phone or face-to-face conversations are far superior as they ensure that the all-important emotional reaction to urgent messages can be managed effectively.

Even instant messaging is an improvement when both parties are able to connect.

Creating the right policies is not difficult, but it does require some careful consideration as companies ask themselves whether or not a particular behaviour is scalable. That is, will it work for large numbers once it becomes widespread?

What Volkswagen and others have discovered is that there are tactics that are counterproductive and unprofitable in the long term, even when they provide short-term relief powered by the latest technology.

Francis Wade is a consultant with Framework Consulting. Send feedback to columns@fwconsulting.com