sanebox:

Email is a huge time waster for teams

A massive amount of time is wasted on email during the course of a day. The average employee spends 13 hours a week reading and responding to email, which is close to 30% of their work time. With 60% of messages in an average inbox being considered not urgent or pressing it’s apparent a huge amount of time is being squandered.

The question is how much of this time could be saved by implementing the right email tools and strategies?

The answer: A WHOLE LOT!

The email irrelevancy issue

According to our internal data, an average inbox contains only ~40% important, relevant emails. This means 60% of the emails in the average inbox are not important and can be processed in bulk. The problem is the vast majority of employees are treating all of their emails with the same level of importance. A recent web-based survey found that 34% of emails are simply back-and-forth replies and 32% of emails should be communicated in person or by phone instead, which suggests there are major inefficiencies in office settings.

Limiting internal email

LCWA Research Group suggests that limiting or even eliminating internal email to employees, which has been suggested isn’t an effective solution to email overload

The 2012 Work-Related Email Perception Study, Enough Already! Stop Bad Email found that middle managers who were spending around 2.5 weeks (100 hrs) per year on unimportant emails didn’t want their email access limited or taken away. They did however want policies put in place that would reduce the volume of emails sent to their inbox.

Email, the necessary evil

61% of executives and 55% of middle managers admitted that email policies on etiquette would be beneficial in their organization.

84% of executives, 83% of middle managers and 77% of employees agreed email is a necessary tool in their organization, while only 8% of executives, 15% of middle managers and 11% of employees explained limiting email during business hours would be effective.

Email services like SaneBox help prioritize emails for teams automatically so employees can concentrate on important emails and then move on to more important tasks. Whether your business has thousands of employees or just several, changing their email strategies and habits, through training or other means is an investment every employer should make.