e-mailitus – many organisations suffer from this potentially fatal disease. Staff spend too much time at their PC’s and use e-mail to drive their daily agenda, control communication and share information. Everyone works longer hours but the company achieves less. 

 Solutions: 

1. Establish healthy e-mail usage rules which encourage good habits where e-mail is useful.

2. Encourage the use of other forms of communications where these do the job better.

3. Teach how to deal well with some of the areas that e-mail is being used as a substitute for (e.g. staff management problems, communication failure, team problem solving, inter-group working).

4. Review success of programme and continue to tailor it to suit.

How gtts can help: we can define best practice, run courses or a broader programme to change the whole way in which  e-mail is used within the organisation and by individuals. The result is more productive time and happier staff.

gtts Training & Consulting

e-mail is a poor substitute for communication - so how can you make it work for your organisation?

Over dependence on e-mail:

• staff communicate inefficiently, most time is spend reactively (waiting for the next e-mail) instead of proactively.

• Conversation and discussion become less important than defending a position  or commenting on earlier e-mails in long and dispersed e-mail chains.

• Lots of time is spent using e-mail to do things that could be dealt with quickly by phone or in person.

• E-mail is misguidedly used to try and communicate on sensitive issues with the result that bigger problems ensue.

• Productivity falls whilst working hours go-up.

• Collaboration becomes slower and less frequent.