Posts Tagged ‘email’

Switched off

17 January, 2012

I saw that Volkswagen have forcibly limited the time during which employees (although not senior management) can receive emails. This radical step was taken to redress the work-life balance, to reduce the pressure on employees to be online and answering emails 24/7. It was negotiated between the works council and the company, and a spokesman  agrees that it’s not for every company.

I read the story back in December when I was on the other side of the world with a time difference of 12 hours. Although I was on holiday I was following a couple of issues that needed to be solved by the end of the year that I’d had to delegate. So I was checking my emails first thing in my morning, which was after the close of business back in Amsterdam. My first thought was therefore that it was particularly unhelpful to anyone travelling in different time zones. A colleague pointed out that imposing this limit would mean she’d stay at the office longer, whereas now she has dinner with her kids and then answers emails once they’re in bed.

I think it’s a step backwards; email, blackberries, remote access are all tools to allow us to work more flexibly. Cutting them off seems to defeat the purpose.

I do recognise the problem, it’s really easy to become addicted to the fast response. It’s easy to substitute email for communication. However email is convenient, it’s less disruptive than a phone call – and the employees of Volkswagen can still receive phone calls.

A better solution would be to implement an email charter in your company, setting out how you expect email to be used. If you can’t imagine what that means don’t worry – there’s a handy one already made for you via Chris Anderson of TED fame.

The Charter has rules that are pretty obvious and simple; respect the recipient’s time, promote clarity, don’t cc endlessly.

I’d add one – model the behaviour you want, particularly if you’re a team leader. Respect the recipient’s own personal time, don’t send an email on a day off that doesn’t need urgent attention – or if you do make sure “for Monday” is in the subject line.

We get to use the tools, they don’t rule us.

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Posted in Communication | Leave a Comment »

Scam File; domain names

10 November, 2011

There are hundreds of scams online. It’s a dangerous world out there. One recurring one is the email from some (fake) domain name agency, informing you that someone is claiming domain names in Asia and you need to Act Now to avoid missing out on these names which include your brand name. Sometimes they refer to spurious trademark or intellectual property legislation.

It’s a scam. You can safely delete the email.

I get a question about this roughly once a week, yet the scam has been around for years. So how can you be sure you’re not caught? What if you see a domain name they’re offering and you think you want it?

First thing is to make sure you are proactive on your domain name acquisition. This requires knowing your company’s brand names and global footprint, and combining that with some knowledge of risk around various domain name registrars. (We used CSC Global to help us figure this out). You should also decide how far down the track of protecting similar spellings you should go – Siemens may regret not buying Seimens.com for example, given how many people have trouble spelling their name.

If you do this, and keep up to date with changes in your company and in the domain name industry, you can be confident that you have the domain names you need for your business to run.

So when the email comes in trying to scare you into paying for domain names you’ll be able to confidently ignore it. This goes for small and large companies.

Very, very occasionally there might be a domain name in the list sent you that you want.  What should you do?

Nothing.

Wait a couple of weeks.

Acquire it yourself – it will still be available.

Image from delete08 via flickr

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Posted in Scam File | Leave a Comment »

An email charter

16 June, 2011
  • Ever had a day when 5pm rolled around and you felt you hadn’t done any work but answer emails?
  • Ever read through an email and not understood what the sender wanted you to do?
  • Thought an email contained an important attachment, only to find it was an image in the sender’s logo?

I’m guessing we’ve all had the above  frustrations – and worse – with our email. I’ve written before on some strategies to up productivity in relation to email. Oatmeal took a more humorous look at bad email behaviour with the “If you do this in an email I hate you“, prompting wry chuckles as it was emailed around the world.

Now Chris from TED has taken a more radical approach to the whole email problem.

He points that it is a scarcity issue – scarcity of attention, and that an email may cost more attention to resolve than it takes to create it; particularly when you take all the cc’s into account.

So he’s proposing an email charter, that we can all sign up to to curb our own email excesses. Some are known – limit the use of cc, keep it short, avoid responding when you feel angry. But he also proposes using some standard abbreviations, for example eom for “end of message” at the end of the subject line when there is no text inside the email.

There are good ideas and a range of comments – join the discussion.

Image from m-c via flickr

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Posted in Productivity | Leave a Comment »

Your Identity Online

27 January, 2011

In a meeting today one of my colleagues stated that “your email address is now your identity online”.

I think what he meant was that your email address is the most likely to be used as an identifier with, for example subscription websites. It does have the advantage that you can confirm it.

But what about your identity? I have several email addresses and handles online, only one has my real name in it. From the rest you could deduce my nationality, my interests, a quirky sense of humour and possibly my city of residence.

More accurate than an astrological chart or a Cosmo Quiz.

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Posted in Editorial | 1 Comment »

The Email Vortex

28 May, 2009

Picture 9It’s easy to get sucked into the email vortex and end up spending your whole day working on email and when five pm rolls around feel that you’ve done nothing. I spent about 2 hours last week figuring out some sensible rules that will work for me.

Emails relating to delegated stuff gets forwarded automatically, daily reports get sent to one folder and I can check through them all at once, but the best thing I did was automate CC emails.

Whereas once they clogged up my mailbox and made it impossible for me to prioritise or even find specific emails now they float into my mail box, and the float out again almost as quickly to a designated folder. I admit to sitting and watching this phenomenon several times.

Why didn’t I do this earlier? It’s only this year that I’ve taken over formally managing a team, suddenly there’s a whole lot of stuff people think I need to see – in fact my team take care of it perfectly well and in general there’s no need for my involvement.

Email management comes with the usual set of tips – and following them makes your day easier.

  1. turn off the on-screen notification
  2. set up extra folders with associated rules to get rid of stuff that’s neither urgent nor important
  3. turn off email, this is akin to blasphemy in some companies but it works.
  4. set an email routine to control the times you work on email
  5. if you’re really completely overwhelmed consider declaring email bankruptcy

Fortunately by following 1-4  I’m not ready to call email bankruptcy now.


image from skalas2 via flickr

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Posted in Productivity | 1 Comment »

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