How to Significantly Reduce Emails in Your Business

Written By:

Learn How You Can Reduce Emails. We Discuss Findings From the Harvard Business Review

The Harvard Business Review reported about a team that had achieved a significant reduction in emails in this article. Their findings were welcomed by all those people suffering from an overload.

But what were the highlights and what can your company do?

Highlights of What the Team Achieved:

  • Within 3 months, the team’s emails had reduced by -54%.
  • The email reduction from the other 73 reports was -64%.
  • Productivity increased by +7% throughout the business.

Highlights of What the Team Did:

  • Approached emails like a lean manufacturing business.
  • Understood that they were sending 56 emails per day.
  • Aimed for a reduction of -20% within 4 months.
  • Received weekly reports on how many emails sent.

What Can Your Company Do to Reduce Emails?

There are 7 steps to significantly reducing emails within your business. This is a practical solution using the tech available to you. Note, this solution only works if your company uses Microsoft 365.

Step 1: Awareness

Share with people in the business a way that they can see how many emails they send each month. This is a starting point for them to realise how many they send. They will compare this to each other. They’ll make excuses for why they are higher than others, and then the magic happens.

Each employee simply goes to Microsoft Analytics: https://myanalytics.microsoft.com/?v=collaboration and signs in. There they can see their Microsoft analytics. This shows how many emails they sent in the last 4 weeks.

Step 2: The Calculation

In the case of the person below, they sent 555 emails in the last 4 weeks. Encourage your employees to divide by 20 (Average working days per month). This means that this user sent 28 per day. Dividing this by an average 9 hour day is 3 per hour, or one every 20-minutes.

Blue and green bar graph showing Communication Habits for emails sent, emails read, and chats and calls
Are you aware of your communication habits?

 

Plus, encourage them to be aware of this fact which is also shown in analytics. How quickly they look at each email when it arrives. This will help them to be aware of how ‘attached’ to their inbox, they really are.

Email logo with two people icons titled Distracted by email
Unless you’re an email customer support agent, a fast email open rate may mean an email attachment. That’s a problem!

 

Step 3: Setting the Target

Agree on a percentage reduction you wish to make as a business. Make this public. Create a SharePoint file and ask everyone to add their number of emails, and then let the file calculate the reduction needed for them. Post progress weekly showing those that achieved their targets. Train people how to improve.

The best of luck!

Related Articles:

Effective Time ManagementTime Management Tips

Time Management Tips

There’s More!

Improve your Personal Development with Resources Designed for You

Woman pointing down with purple down arrows
Pack of MBM Coaching card on yellow background

Get your Pack of Coaching Cards from Amazon

Sign up to receive regular articles on learning and development.

You may also like: