Emails are Under Fire - By David Burkus

Emails are Under Fire

By David Burkus

Employees like Emails because we get things done faster. Instead of the back and forth, things are solved quicker. 

Banning or putting restrictions on email, the research suggests, can dramatically increase individual productivity and reduce stress. Researchers from the University of California, Irvine and the U.S. Army cut off email usage for thirteen civilian office workers and measured the effects on productivity and stress. The researchers first took participants through a three-day baseline period in which they were interviewed and observed both visually and with computer monitoring software. They even measured the participants’ heart rates. Then they pulled the plug on email, installing a filter on the participants email program which would file away all incoming messages for later reading and remove all notifications.

Further studies suggest that just limiting email checking to a certain number of times per day or only checking the inbox at particular times can have almost as dramatic an effect. While the no email trend seems like it would be only for the most maverick of companies, its taking root in a range of industries. In Germany car makers have announced policies to limit email. A New York Times columnist wrote about tools he uses with his editors that replace email. Even Halton Housing Trust, a UK-based housing nonprofit, which manages thousands of homes, has cut email.

Halton’s CEO Nick Atkin is a vocal critic of email, though he admitted in a company blog post that effort has been far from “plain sailing”. He wrote that the challenges in getting his 280 employees to stop constantly checking their inbox “further proves the point about how people are addicted to email and as such have an irrational response when this is about to be taken away from them”.