For each profession it is important to organise working hours appropriately. Anything that distracts us from our daily duties has a negative impact on our productivity. As it turns out, e-mails belong to this disgraceful group. But do companies - large and small - have an alternative?
Email exchanges, of course, depending on the company, can steal up to a quarter of our working time. Four years ago, the University of California conducted a thorough study on this subject. The record-breaker checked the mail 370 times a day. According to their experience, the average 'look in the box' was 77 times a day. And this is only the tip of the iceberg.
The beginning of frustration
Certainly, many people worked through the scenario when they were obliged to prepare an e-mail with a report containing a list of current achievements every day. We need five to twenty minutes to write this information, which means that we can waste up to two hours a week writing e-mails. Electronic mailbox communication dominates the business space - especially inside companies, where sometimes absurdities occur when colleagues sitting opposite each other agree on all activities digitally.
From more clear examples it is worth mentioning Marissa Mayer's. President Yahoo! received up to 700 messages in her business mailbox, which forced her to write off weekend marathons, consuming several hours of her free time. As it turns out, the vast majority of executives check their emails out of office hours. To a large extent, a smartphone is often used for this purpose. This clearly shows how much e-mail has taken over our lives.
Even ordinary employees have two or more business boxes each, which are flooded with internal and external communication messages on a daily basis, and we won't even mention advertising and spam. The coded habit of constantly refreshing mail so that it doesn't accidentally skip the new guidelines, steals attention and valuable time. As a result, mailbox is one of the main reasons for employee frustration. Mail management involves unnecessary stress and a work-life balance problem.
In search of alternatives
It is hard to imagine that suddenly in communication with business partners - permanent and new - we will give up our e-mail box. Nevertheless, some changes at the level of internal management of the company should be considered. Too much reliance on email in the wider context only creates chaos, not to mention the fact that the mailbox is not suitable for storing important files and reports. In this regard, entrepreneurs often opt for cloud services such as Google Drive and Dropbox.
At the same time, the proper processing of e-mails is very laborious. They are managed by specific language rules, polite phrases and remember about punctuation. All this proves the professionalism of the interlocutor, but ultimately it is an unnecessary waste of time, because it brings nothing concrete to the effectiveness of work. In addition, the process of waiting for a response, approval or rejection of the message itself sometimes causes significant downtime.
An interesting alternative may be a task management application. It allows you to freely exchange messages, attach links, attach files or entire documents. It will not happen without creating dedicated groups for individual projects. Most importantly, it is a simple way to unify communication for everyone, where informal nature does not interfere with productivity. The task management application allows you to focus on the specifics, while maintaining a high degree of flexibility for the entire team.
As we have already mentioned, e-mails from the business space are unlikely to disappear. At least there is no indication of that. However, it is worth looking for alternatives. Ultimately, however, it is best to use common sense and moderation in everything. The fact that in large and dispersed enterprises, communication causes many technical problems. However, in small and medium enterprises, let us not forget about direct communication. Face-to-face meetings allow to create real interpersonal interactions. This has a significant impact on the overall atmosphere and relations between employees. Finally, don't let your email box completely dominate your life - business and private.
