Encourage Staff To Create Fewer Emails
Given that a large percentage of the emails received by staff within your institution will have been created internally, reducing the number of emails individual staff send will subsequently reduce the number of messages all staff receive and need to manage. This will not only help reduce the overall volume of network traffic and decrease the chances of mistakes through user-error, it will also increase the overall efficiency of your institution. Many users will instinctively break off from the task in hand when notified that a new message has been received, thus breaking their train of thought. Also, if you assume an average of 2 minutes is spent reading and responding to each message, multiplying that by the average number of messages received and then by the number of staff in your institution it is possible to quickly arrive at a frighteningly high staff-costs figure.
Providing And Promoting Alternatives
In order to try to wean users of sole reliance on email it is necessary for the institution to provide and promote alternatives. That way email can be seen as representing just one tool amongst many at the user's disposal for use only when it makes sense to select it. Remind users that one quick phone call can save a dozen emails when trying to arrange a meeting and support this by ensuring that the internal phone directory is easy to find and up-to-date and that staff have access to modern phones which can store frequently used numbers etc.
The institution should also ensure efficient use of its intranet to distribute 'all staff' information, perhaps making use of RSS feeds to notify users of updates and changes. It should also ensure that all staff have access to shared file areas to prevent the need to rely on email to share documents (this also has additional information and records management advantages explored in version control from the Records Management strand).
Promoting Good Practice
A combination of documented procedures and user training will make a significant difference. These should not only cover when not to use email as outlined above, but also more detailed guidance on thinking carefully before selecting 'Reply All' or when sending emails to large groups of users. The institution should ensure that it practices what it preaches in this regard as the high volume of 'All staff' emails used to transmit information of use to only a very small, easily identified, group of users is often a common culprit!
Some organisations have gone even further and instituted regular 'no email days' when it is forbidden (or at least strongly frowned upon) to send or respond to internal emails. Such initiatives, even if promoted as one off events can help raise the profile of the problem, remind users of the alternatives and help them recall the advantages of an un-interrupted period of work.
Publishing statistics on the volume of emails sent by the institution's servers each day/week/month and setting a reduction target can also be an effective way of raising awareness - especially if accompanied by a small prize for the team or department which manages to meet the target figure first.
