That other scourge of modern life, email, seems to have hit epic heights with people telling us that they’re getting up to 500 emails a day. This is a massive amount of information for anyone to process alongside their normal tasks. The sheer volume means that any small improvements in managing email pay dividends. Here are a few insights from research to help us think how to deal with it.
There are a few studies that have analysed office workers’ habits in relation to email traffic. A study in one organisation showed that in 70% of cases, workers began to respond to incoming emails within six seconds of their arrival in their email box – or, as the authors put it, faster than letting the phone ring three times! 85% began responding within two minutes. This sounds pretty efficient until you consider how this impacts on people’s focus on their main task. For knowledge workers who are high users of email, this continuous pattern of interruption has a number of detrimental effects. These arise from the fact that as humans (that covers most of us), while we have the capacity to improve attention switching and become more efficient with practice, our attentional resources are ultimately finite. The most important effect is the time it takes to get reabsorbed in your main task (researchers call this "resumption lag"). Studies have estimated that about half an hour a day is lost in attention switching – and this is likely to be quite a lot higher for people at the 500 email a day level. It also has secondary effects as workers are more error prone when they are interrupted. This is difficult to generalise about but one study of workers processing large amounts of data showed that their error rate doubles after interruption. It also takes longer – up to 25% longer- to complete your primary task because of interruption. This pattern of working is fatiguing, it raises stress and makes some people feel overwhelmed.
So what to do about it? One study used some of this data to computer model different patterns of responding and recommended setting aside three periods in the working day as being an efficient way of reducing these detrimental effects. This might be too much for some, so organisations and teams could encourage a culture of only checking email in the break between tasks rather than feeling pressure to respond continuously. Pop-up notices announcing all incoming mails should probably be disabled as these are a definite source of interruption. Setting up a triage system to direct incoming emails into different priority folders is also a possibility so that responsiveness can be more easily prioritised. To reduce the overall volume, pop-ups asking people whether they really need to send this message to everyone when they hit the 'reply to all' button could help to drastically reduce the number of internal emails, as could some initial training about when to use email and when to pick up the phone. The key message is that putting some frameworks in place to help people deal with their overflowing inboxes will help to reduce stress, increase productivity and make people happier.
Gupta, A. (2006) Understanding the Rhythms of Email Processing Strategies in a Network of Knowledge Workers. Unpublished doctoral thesis Oklahoma State University.
Gupta, A., Li, H., & Sharda, R. (2013 ) Should I send this message? Understanding the impact of interruptions, social hierarchy & Perceived task complexity on user performance and perceived workload. Decision Support Systems, 55, 135-145.
Jackson, T., Dawson, R. & Wilson, D. (2003). Reducing the effect of email interruptions on employees. International Journal of Information Management, 23 (1), 55-65.
Mansi, G. & Levy, Y. (2013) Do instant messaging interruptions help or hinder knowledge workers’ task performance? International Journal of Information Management (33), 591-596.
Sykes, E. R. (2011) Interruptions in the workplace: A case study to reduce their effects. International Journal of Information Management (31), 385-394.
Vidgen, R., Sims, J., & Powell, P. (2011). Understanding email overload. Journal of Communication Management 15(1), 84-98.
