Can We All Agree Which Day Should Be Email Free?
from the this-will-never-work dept
Ah, the return of the “email free *day.” In 2002 we had the story of the Liverpool City Council banning all internal email use on Wednesdays based on the idea that sometimes it was good to force people to communicate in other ways. In 2003 Phones4U’s CEO (also based in the UK) decided that email was wasting his employees’ time, and banned all internal email communications. Last year, Veritas decided to have email free Fridays to get people to communicate in a different way. It seems that, once a year, this idea gets picked up somewhere. The latest is that the Essex police chief has told his staff to avoid emailing each other on Wednesdays (agreeing with the Liverpool City Council on the proper day, apparently). It’s an interesting idea to try to force people to seek alternate means of communication and break them of a bad habit… but, sometimes email really is the best means of communication. So, arbitrarily banning it doesn’t seem like the most productive of solutions.
Comments on “Can We All Agree Which Day Should Be Email Free?”
No Subject Given
Email is counter productive because it’s “on the record”. This means simple queries get turned into epic dramas with everyone attempting to cover their ass in case somewhere down the line the shit hits the fan. If I had my way I’d completely ban internal office emailing.
Re: No Subject Given
I’ll second that. I’ve printed off email “discussions” that are 6 pages long when a single paragraph would have sufficed. This has become the norm since we hired a manager who has to have her fingers in everythin we do and since our last reorg added another layer of management. So much for a streamlined process.
Re: Re: No Subject Given
There’s a difference between using email and misusing email. Banning it entirely because some people don’t know how to use it properly is overkill.
Re: Re: Re: No Subject Given
Maybe it’s the corporate culture more than the media? I’ve worked at a couple of fortune 500 companies, a national physics laboratory and several small companies. Nearly All the spam I’ve received has been from outside sources. Usually the threads on an issue are to the point. Email is without a doubt the most efficient means of communicating technical issues short of face-to-face with a chalk board. I love it. That said, I’ve been surrounded by engineers and scientists all of my working life which admittedly slants my perspective. But I’ve seen similar behavior at manufacturing plants with employees using the copier… joke of the day, circulating inane memos, magic letter that you dare not discard. It’s the sheer volume of such crap that a person can generate, with relative ease, when using email that makes the difference.
What a bunch of dumbasses
And how do they convince everyone they do business with not to bother sending them email on the “magic” no email day.
What a load of crap. Notice how it’s never a real business that pulls shit like this, it’s always some low level government agency (obviously hiring the best minimum wage can buy for managers).
//hate stupid people
No Subject Given
Well to me of the idea of No Email just seems like a way for the goverment influenced by Big Corporations is just saying that due to the fact that they are pushing them to force some time of law to benefit them, if people Dont use a Phone, Dont Buy Paper, Dont buy a pen they lose money but hey theyre to lazy to think of new ideas to attract people into using those products.
in conclusing i say the goverment just wants better control of what we do hey they know who wrote this and were i live. there fore fredom exist but to a controled level, we all have a goverment issued number it might not be tatooed in to our arms but we’re still issued on, and well im just babeling on so im ending with this. Fredom is Fredom and it shuldent be Controled
No Subject Given
I’ve worked in places where they print e-mail out to keep as a record. Maybe its just me but does anyone else think this completely defies the point of e-mail in the first place ?! I always thought the point was that its faster, cheaper (in the long run) and paper free. Yeah, ok, you still get the faster and cheaper advantages but whats the point in using a paper free method of communcation if your just goin to print it out once you receive it ?! seems daft to me !!
As has already been said, people should be taught to use e-mail not abuse it. There are far better ways of storing email then to print it “for the records”