An average professional spends 28% of their working day reading and answering emails. Let that sink in for a moment. A quarter of your day is spent trying to navigate the overflowing mess that is your inbox. We’re sure there are plenty of more productive places this time would be better spent. 

Now add this up across every department of your organisation and member of your workforce. Just how much time and productivity are we wasting trying to keep up with a potentially outdated communication system?

A lack of organisation 

Email’s main downfall for business is a complete lack of organisation. If you receive the average 121 emails per day, these all go straight into your main inbox, which is likely already disorganised and chaotic.

Between one-to-one conversations with colleagues and clients, the bigger conversation threads you’re CC’d into, and spam, it can feel like a full-time job in and of itself to keep things organised. 

Even the use of folders and labels only adds to the complexity. To keep up with labelling each email, you need to be prepared to spend solid chunks of time sorting out your inbox or distracting yourself at multiple times throughout the day to keep on top of it in real-time.

It takes an average of 64 seconds to return to the same level of productivity you were at before getting distracted by an action like checking your email. So if you’re checking your email multiple times throughout the day, all these minutes add up and are taking away from core business operations.

A lack of priority

Another issue with email is there’s no real focus on priority. You can normally only tell the priority of an email after reading it. But by that point, you’ve already spent time processing what it’s saying. 

Even when people are given the option to assign low, medium, or high priority to their messages, everything quickly slips into the high priority category, making the whole thing redundant. In a disorganised email inbox, everything builds up and becomes less effective. Each email – even the most urgent ones – becomes just another number adding to an already crammed inbox.

What this means for business

Managing emails is time-consuming for any business. And not only that, it’s tedious and boring for your staff to do each day. Time spent for each of your staff to check their emails, reply to those that need replying to, organise them by client or contact, and delete spam would surely be better placed on business development or core operations.

Even if you quickly scan emails to determine their priority, assign to a folder, and plan to revisit, you still need to go back and reread them all in full anyway. You’re just delaying an inevitable task.

When important messages are replied to late – or missed altogether – your business can end up looking incompetent and clients or customers could quickly lose trust in you. Messy inboxes don’t align with seamless, efficient operations, and this could quickly impact your business’s reputation.

All these issues are only amplified for larger, multinational companies that have many teams across multiple departments in a wide variety of locations.

What you can do about it

As businesses, we should aim for maximum efficiency in business communication. It’s how you ensure everyone stays informed, organised, and productive. But what can you do if emails aren’t cutting it?

Luckily, there are many different digital tools out there to use as alternatives. The right tools allow for easy prioritisation and seamless organisation of messages, so less time is needed to sort through an email inbox. 

Some can filter through your messages in terms of contact, subject, department, client, or anything else that helps your staff distinguish their messages. Using read receipts and setting questions for staff to answer after reading each message allows you to ensure nothing is missed and every piece of urgent information has been received, read, and fully understood.

Your ultimate goal should be organisation. It should be a method that saves your staff time and allows them to be more efficient and productive. Emails used to be the height of technology, a saving grace, but have now become a weight that drags us down. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

When it comes to seamless business communication, Inform People knows what you need. We enable our clients to move away from the email system altogether, prioritising an organised, efficient, and productive way to communicate. If you’d like to find out more, get in touch on +44 (0)161 713 4104 or via email.