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When researching (surveys, focus groups, etc) for creating an Intranet, the feedback we got from staff was that there were too many Everyone Emails and it was negatively affecting staff productivity. As we created our Intranet, the main objective was to create spaces where information could be posted without sending an Everyone Email.
So we launched an Intranet at the beginning of September and restricted access to the Everyone Email List at the end of the same month. It’s November now and it seems the negative feedback is increasing. The vocal minority of staff are asking for the Everyone Emails back. Even though they are the minority, they are the leaders of this organization. We need their help to change staff behavior.
In order to facilitate the discussion with them, I’m looking for literature about using email as a communication vehicle. I’ve come across some in the past but can’t find them now.
Can anyone help me out? - thanks in advance!
Since most people have their email open all day, "Everyone emails" are major interruptors. It sounds like your staff made their voice known, so I would show this data to the leaders if they push back.
Have you looked into sending a weekly or bi-weekly email that contains catchy headlines and teasers that link to the intranet for the full story? These emails would be a compilation of all the individual emails that are currently sent. Our company is looking at doing this because we've found that a very, very low percentage of everyone emails are urgent enough to warrant the interruption of all employees.
Since most people have their email open all day, "Everyone emails" are major interruptors. It sounds like your staff made their voice known, so I would show this to the leaders if they push back.
Have you looked into sending a weekly or bi-weekly email that contains catchy headlines and teasers that link to the intranet for the full story? This is what our company is looking at because we've found that a very, very low percentage of everyone emails are urgent enough to warrant the interruption of all employees.
We experienced a similar problem with executive staff. What we discovered is that they like to use their blackberry for email. If something was posted on the intranet, they missed, especially given that 25% of them were traveling at any given time. We found that there was no easy fix here - the man who signs our checks wanted email, so we still do email. What I have done is post announcements in the morning and just before lunch when most users said they check the intranet for what's new. I don't send the email out until 30 min to 1 hour after I post. So far no flack.
Thank you so much for your responses.
To clarify – the “everyone emails” "management misses" were sent from everyone throughout the organization (from janitors to execs). The topics ranged from “puppy for sale” to “registration for organization initiative xxx is due today” to “Sally Sue is on vacation this week.”
I have a pretty good idea of what we need to do (or what should have done from the start):
1. Send a regular email with links to what has recently been updated on the Intranet,
2. Start departmental email list and give people within those departments access to them,
3. Create a strong everyone email policy and give management access to the everyone list.
What would be helpful to my cause is any literature to back-up what, in my experience, has proven to be successful. My word on the matter isn’t enough – literature would certainly assist in convincing them.
If you open up mass emails, definitely come up with a checklist that is applied consistently. Also keep control so you can schedule mass emails and not end up sending a lot in a day. Someone needs visibility of everything that's being broadcast. I wrote a post about how I.C. might take on the role of protecting employees from too much push.
SOURCES:
1. You can find some research on email effectiveness at www.basex.com. They research information overload and email comes into it a lot. Unfortunately they don't research broadcast/mass internal emails specifically. (Wish someone would measure the impact of email news consolidation at the very least)
Here is a summary of one of their studies on Intel. http://bsx.stores.yahoo.net/inwaroninov.html
Internal Intel surveys in 2006 revealed that that:
- The typical Intel employee was receiving 50-100 e-mail messages daily
- Employees were on average spending 20 hours per week handling e-mail
- 30% of e-mails were unnecessary
- Top executives reported receiving up to 300 messages per day
- Intel as a company received on average 3 million e-mails a day
2. Second source: sinicom.com
Angela Sinickas has some survey info that is useful. She responded to a Melcrum forum question of mine last year (now gone otherwise I'd link to it!) with some info about a company that surveyed employees. They preferred overwhelmingly a consolidated email bulletin to individual mass emails. I suggest you email her and see if she has anything!
3. Two posts that are relevant:
http://www.cutthroughcommunications.com/blog/2009/07/14/protecting-employees-from-internal-spam-whos-doing-it/comment-page-1/
http://www.cutthroughcommunications.com/blog/2009/03/27/reducing-corporate-email-overload/
Hope this helps!
-------------------------------- Paula Cassin
Desktop messaging tools that engage employees and drive action.
www.cutthroughcommunications.com
You might want to check out this article by Jakob Nielson on email newsletters:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/newsletters.html
The data on where people look and how long they spend reading email newsletters is helpful.
The information from the Pew Internet & American Life surveys is also extremely valuable, here:
http://www.pewinternet.org/
Finally, there are a number of different places (including the Pew studies above) that indicate that the average office worker spends about 10 seconds on each email. We've used that 10-second data point, coupled with the 1-2 minutes spent reading each email newsletter (from the Nielson site above), coupled with the readily available data on average time spent on site for social networking sites like Facebook (5-6 hours/month), to build our argument for what kinds of content needs to go in which bucket, to wit:
1. Email must be extremely brief and to the point.
2. Email newsletters must be structured well, have engrossing content that links to other sources, and provide easy opt-out options.
3. The bulk of content needs to be built around mechanisms that allow users to be social with the information--share it with other users, comment on it, interact with it in some way.
One of our clients had a similar problem –they resolved it using a staff e-mag which allows anyone to submit an article. The finished magazine is auto aggregated (with editorial controls) so that mass messages only interrupt once or twice a week rather than constantly throughout the week. If you’d like to know more you can find it here:
