It’s a new year, and most of us are back to work after enjoying some time out of the office. If you’re like me, getting back to work means one thing: a full email inbox (or, in fact, an inbox that has shut down due to size restrictions).
In a world where new online media – from videos and status updates to tweets and texts – have added to the inundation of personal and work-related communications that employees feel compelled to monitor, one has to wonder: WHO has the time to read all this? And how do they get any actual WORK done?
One man is asking, and answering, that question in a very public way.
Thierry Breton , CEO of Atos, one of Europe’s largest information technology services companies, is making headlines with his announcement that he’ll institute a “zero email” internal communications policy within 18 months.
Yep, you read that right. He is BANNING internal email.
Turns out Breton, a former Finance minister, is a numbers guy. And here’s what the numbers are telling him:
- The average Atos employee receives 200 emails per day
- Only 10 percent of those messages are deemed useful
- It takes 64 seconds to get back on task after reading a useless email
- Atos staff spend anywhere from five to 20 hours per week handling email
Simply put: Time Suck + Dying Technology = Time to Think Differently
Breton is quick to stress that internal communications at Atos remains a priority. However, he’d like employees to either migrate their day-to-day interactions to “new” interfaces like instant messaging and a Facebook-style platform or stick to the tried and true: a phone call, text or face-to-face conversation. As he puts it, “Emails cannot replace the spoken word.” (See? He’s still old-school at heart.)
The social business proponent (and corporate employee) in me can’t help but applaud Breton for this bold move. At least half of the emails most of us receive use the channel for the wrong reasons: to exchange large files, to comment on a snowballing conversation thread, or to correct a misunderstanding that would never have happened had someone simply picked up the phone or dropped by a colleague’s office. Email inboxes are overwhelming, distracting, and often unproductive. For much of what they contain, there are better social business tools out there.
The internal communicator in me can’t help but be skeptical. It’s true that email is not a true collaboration tool, and there are better ways to enable employees to talk to and work with each other. But when it comes to ways for the company to directly reach the employee with critical information, email is almost always the channel of choice. It’s reliable, it’s thorough and it’s accessible. And most importantly, it allows for a degree of message complexity, integrity and control that’s surrendered as soon as you take your message social or truncate to make it tweetworthy. No communicator wants to give that up – and I’m not sure they should.
One can only hope for the best of both worlds: that companies will tap into evolving social and mobile technologies in ways that enable employees to work smarter. And that, as a result, the fire hose that is our collective email inbox experience will slow to a more manageable trickle, surfacing the most messages we actually need to read.
What I know for sure is this: Whether you agree with Breton’s employee email ban or not, his premise is right on the money: “The deluge of information will be one of the most important problems a company will face in the future. It is time to think differently.”
What do YOU think? Could your organization go email free? Comments are open!
You’ve done a good job outlining both sides of this pretty bold move by Mr. Breton. I firmly believe organizations should rely less on email and start training employees how to use emerging collaboration tools instead. First, it’s imperative that companies make these tools available to employees at the workplace — on the company intranet, through company-issues mobile devices, etc. — and then train employees how these collaboration tools can replace email to reduce inbox clutter. I’m curious to see Breton’s update 18 months from now, and hear about other companies joining this movement.
I’m wondering what channel Mr. Breton chose to communicate this change to his employees … and how many, if any, emails will be used to do so leading up to the ban. Ah, the Catch-22!
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