Holding back the tide

By Bill Raschen

Grouchy he may be on occasion, but no one can deny the saintly Sir Bob Geldof’s skill for articulating an argument. At a recent conference organised by innovation company What If, his target was not the debt-relief policies of G8, but the proliferation of e-mails in the workplace, which he blamed for “giving a feeling of action, which is a mistake”. Commenting that he dreaded seeing a mountain of e-mails in his inbox, Geldof’s advice was reminiscent of Nancy Reagan’s stance on drugs: “Don’t do e-mail”. He has a point.

E-mail is, of course, a quick, cheap and very easy means of communication – we all use it at work and we all suffer from it, too. Recent US statistics suggest that in 1995, the average worker received eight e-mails a day, increasing to 90 by 2005. During an average year, a worker may be processing about 16,000 e-mails. As Bruce Friedman, the reporter of the statistics, says: “what other activity do you participate in that many times per year other than say, breathing?”

If these demands on your time aren’t bad enough, e-mails may also be harming your health. An April 2005 study by the Institute of Psychiatry for computing giant HP cheerily warns of a rise in ‘infomania’, with people becoming hopelessly addicted to electronic messaging. According to the study, workers distracted by their inboxes will see a ten-point fall in their IQ, more than twice that found in studies of the impact of smoking marijuana. And, while your mental faculties ebb away, e-mails could be making you roly-poly as well. Sports England, the successor to the English Sports Council, has argued that excessive e-mail use runs the risk of creating a generation of unfit, overweight office workers – contributing to record levels of obesity nationwide.

With arguments like those above (and we haven’t even mentioned spam, phishing, or dodgy attachments), there is a strong temptation to bin one’s entire inbox and take a long walk in the winter sunshine. Sadly, of course, life isn’t that simple. For starters, in the UK the Freedom of Information Act places stringent controls on the retention of e-mails within many organisations, with information commissioner Richard Thomas arguing that messages in the workplace should only be deleted if they serve “no current purpose”. Government measures in the wake of the London bombings last July also play a part, and the Home Office is joining with the Foreign Office in lobbying for the long-term retention of e-mail records across Europe.

The solution to the problem, even if it is rather similar to King Canute attempting to hold back the tide, is to make sure that there’s a durable e-mail policy in place at your organisation – and manage it effectively. If one puts aside the (fairly light-hearted) threats of e-mail to your mental and physical wellbeing, of far more immediate relevance to employers will be matters such as the threat of legal liability resulting from misuse of e-mails, confidentiality breaches or damage to an organisation’s reputation. Add to that the threat of network congestion and down time resulting from large e-mail attachments, and the arguments in favour of an e-mail policy become pretty clear.

An initial measure to consider will be the imposition of physical constraints to alleviate network congestion: for example, limiting the size of an individual mail folders. Coupled to this will be the compilation of a list of the main issues relating to e-mails in the workplace, headed by a description of e-mail risks, to make users aware of the potentially harmful effects of their actions. It’s worth repeating that any message, once sent, will be in the public domain – and you’ll almost certainly have lost control of it. If in doubt, don’t send!

The policy should make reference to ‘good practice’ guidelines for storage of e-mails, particularly if you are retaining and archiving e-mails onto a document-management system. Simple matters like ensuring that messages have clear and descriptive titles will make it considerably easier to search for and retrieve e-mails later. These guidelines could also lay down some simple criteria for the wording of ‘official’ e-mails, in order to uphold an organisation’s good reputation. In late 2004, it was reported by the BBC that Unilever was sending some of its staff on writing courses, in part because senior managers were ‘becoming ruder’ in their messages, suffering from the strain of dealing with 300 to 500 e-mails per week.

Other measures that the policy should deal with will include controls on personal e-mail and prohibited content, particularly offensive or disruptive messages. The treatment of confidential data and document retention policies will also play a part. Unless you are formally required by law to archive messages, it also makes sense to have a document-retention policy, the length of time that an e-mail is retained on the system before it is automatically deleted, in order to save space on the server. Finally, if you are adding a disclaimer to staff e-mails make sure that they are aware of this and provide details of the text that is added.

Once written, the e-mail policy should be publicised throughout the workplace, with employees made to acknowledge in writing that they are aware of its contents. Beyond this, provide training to ensure that your colleagues are applying the policy correctly. Finally, ensure that the policy is enforced – you don’t want to be the one who faces the fall-out when things go wrong!

The policy measures outlined above probably won’t change Sir Bob Geldof’s views on e-mails, but they could lead to you enjoying a quieter and less stressful life in the workplace. And, as a quick parting shot, here is my own suggested 11^th commandment: never, ever send e-mails when you’ve just returned from the pub. That really is a course of action you might live to regret.

References
https://www.labinfotech.org/LIS2005/commentary20050208.php