Write It Well

“I received your report. We need to talk,” read the e-mail.

“Oh no!” I thought, “how bad was my report?”

Not bad at all. In fact, the report was great and my manager just wanted to tell me so in person. Unfortunately, his e-mail was too tersely worded. People often express anger by being curt and blunt. E-mail messages also tend to be curt and blunt, because the medium is so casual. Remember that your reader doesn’t hear your friendly tone of voice, or know that you were rushing out the door to a meeting. Try to find the sweet spot — a businesslike tempo between gushing and surly.

To really get your idea across, reach for the phone AND your computer. The phone adds urgency and personality to your e-mail, while an e-mail can quickly convey and store detailed or complicated information. Your goal is to keep your correspondents from having to jot down notes on the phone, while letting them know that your message is important enough for a phone call.

The order — phone first or later — depends on your message. It may be most effective to send an e-mail with all the information, adding, “I’ll call you on Thursday to hear your opinion.” Or, you can use your phone call to cover the basics, adding, “I’ll e-mail you with the details of our conversation.”

Hitting “send” is easier than finding a stamp and sealing an envelope, and far easier than confronting a person face-to-face. If you’re prone to bursts of anger, put a safety on your send button: compose your e-mail in a word processor. The extra cut-and-paste steps will help you avoid sending e-mail that could damage relationships or even land you in legal trouble. Check out Chapter 5: Cautionary Tales in E-Mail: A Write It Well Guide.

22% of workers who use e-mail say that they are required to check their business e-mail even when they aren’t at work, according to a study by the PEW Internet and American Life Project published last week. The numbers are even higher for the BlackBerry-and-iPhone set: 48% of workers with mobile e-mail say they have to check their e-mail at home.

With all this e-mail interrupting our weekends, it’s even more important that our messages are relevant, clear, and concise. Write It Well offers workshops and do-it-yourself workshop facilitator kits that can help your business reduce e-mail clutter — and leave your down-time as free as possible.

• Keep messages short. When sending e-mail that might be read on a hand-held device, keep messages short and put the key information at the top.
• Describe attachments. When sending e-mail to people on the move, always describe attachments (briefly) because they might not be able to see them right away.
• Reduce the need for lengthy responses. Try to structure messages so recipients either do not need to respond or can answer in few words.

If SPAM refers to all the unwanted e-mail that you receive, your colleagues are likely sending more of it than anyone else. And, since their e-mails can get through the servers, you’re seeing more of it in your inbox.Ask your colleagues to answer these questions before sending e-mail or “replying to all.” This will reducethe amount of unnecessary e-mail they send you.

1. Do you have answers to quesitons they are asking?

2. Have you asked for the information?

3. Do you need to know that they want to need something done?

4. Will you make a decision or take action based on the information they are sending?

You might have already been concerned about the amount oftime you and youremployees spend managing e-mail (read, write, find). Have you stopped to consider the impact to the bottom line? Based on our data and calculations, a 500-person organization spends more than $4 million dollars each year on inefficient e-mail.

The average worker receives at least 65e-mail messages per day. Multiply that by the number of work days in theyear (240) and that means thatthe average workerreceives 15,600 e-mails per year.

It takes, on average, two anda half minutes to read and respond to an e-mail message. That means thateach worker spends 39,000 minutes/650 hours/81 daysper year managing e-mail.

Of the 156,000 e-mails that the average worker receives each year, about thirty percent are unnecessary. That is equal to27wasted days each year.

Based on a salary of $40/hour,27 wasted days costs about $8,640 per year.If there are 500 employees in your organization, the total cost of inefficient e-mail is $4,320,000.