A world without email...

A couple of years ago I was one of the CIPR's external examiners - which meant that at this time of year I had to review marked scripts from around the UK.  This picture shows why I don't miss the semi-voluntary role at all. So my heart goes out at this time of year to academics who have to plough through tons of paper...

And I guess many of us don't really miss the days when everything was done on paper.  Electronic communication has made life easier in so many ways.

But I just saw a posting on the Communicators Network by Kristina Galouchko of AREVA.  She was asking if anyone had any experience of email-free days.

The first response was that they don't work in the age of distance working and Blackberrys.  But I think that's no reason for not trying.

Not least, one of the best people I ever worked with, Helen Johnson (now of Telent and currently regretting her desision to go an a cruse ship in a choppy English Channel) used to regularly declare fridays email-free.  She would call you or even visit you if you emailed her on those days.  Her argument was that common courtesy meant that you had to chat to people for at least a minute or two - an essential element of building a relationship.

As a result, she knew better than anyone what was going on her part of the company.

So why wouldn't it work as a campaign idea generally?  Perhaps on a designated day you could let people send only 10 emails or maybe pay a fine to charity for every email they send?  Maybe you could set up free coffee stands around the site for people to agree to meet and run through their lists of things.  You could, as a symbolic guesture set up a boxing ring and invite 25 people to fight simultaneously over a misunderstanding - rounds last either 3 minutes or two days?

I remember BP ran a great campaign a couple of years back - they surveyed eveyone about excessive email and came up with a strap line that said "75% of people say they get too much email, but only 8% admit to sending more than they should - so who's sending it????"

Maybe if we can crack this one I can once again run focus groups without worrying that they will degenerate into moan sessions about the volume of email...

Liam

Comments

[Geoff T]

Hey Liam,

This is something our organisation is looking at doing. Our CEO only gets 20-30 emails a day as no one CCs him unless they absoluetly have to and he's keen to get this through the business. The start of this is to be email free days. I'm loving the ideas of coffee points and fines so will get these up and running. Does anyone else have an idea about how we can reduce the emails!

Cheers
Geoff