Archive for October 19th, 2008
Anti spam blockers continue to filter out spam from the front-line, their objective being to prevent spam from unknown baddies getting into our inboxes. However, according to internationally respected research firm Gartner Group, 30% of the email we receive is occupational spam sent internally by our own colleagues, the rotten scoundrels! Thankfully, it seems that occupational spam can be reduced or eradicated quite easily with the right education.
Apparently we all receive several unnecessarily CC, BCC and Reply-To-All messages at work each day which significantly cuts down our productivity. These, coupled with the equally unnecessary “thanks for that” and “no problem, anytime” responses to replies, can quickly add up to several hours a month in wasted time processing them.
In his article, Email Hell for Forbes, Ross Mayfield, writes that Basex Research calculates these interruptions are costing industry up to $650 billion each year in lost productivity. They also estimate that the average corporate employee will send and receive a staggering 228 email messages per day by 2010.
Mayfield suggests that businesses can reduce this email overload by transferring some of the need for these messages to be transmitted via email very easily. Companies can post the replies to questions on their blog or use Web 2.0 interactivity to publish and distribute answers preemptively.Of course, this is not going to be suitable for every type of situation, but can encourage companies to look at new approaches to communication.
As unsolicited email spam continues to tangle with spam filters and anti spam blockers, perhaps the first thing we can all do at work, is think twice before spamming our colleagues, clients and suppliers with unnecessary messages. Ross Mayfield’s Email Hell article suggests various additional approaches businesses can take and makes interesting reading.
