Loyalty Leader Quick Tips

Email is a great productivity tool, right? Wrong! Email use is out of control. Employee relationships are breaking down because co-workers are avoiding face to face conversations and even phone conversations. They’re hiding behind email. Email is doing more damage to customer and co-worker relationships than any other form of communication. It is often misinterpreted and can be a tremendous waste of time.

The more email you send, the more you get. Employees everywhere are reporting that they are spending two hours per day dealing with email. Managers at one company in Liverpool, England estimates that its 6,000 employees send each other 40,000 messages a day.

A few of the negative consequences when co-workers send email instead of talking to one another:

• Increased gossip and mistrust.
• Issues are not addressed and resolved quickly.
• Silos are formed creating an “us vs. them” work environment.
• Co-worker empathy decreases because employees are simply not getting to know each other.
• Frequent miscommunication and misunderstanding.

Business leaders all over the world are concerned about email over-use and abuse and are taking a stand. “Never on Friday” is becoming a common theme where all internal email is banned every Friday.

You can establish a “no email” policy one day a week, even if your company doesn’t establish an email ban.

• Meet with your co-workers face to face.
• Pick up the phone and call someone–a customer, co-worker or vendor.
• Get up and walk to another department to chat with members of the team with whom you deal.
• In sales? Get out to the field and meet with your customers.

Ironically, one executive sent an email to employees announcing the Friday email ban. He said he looked forward to not hearing from his employees but encouraged them to “stop by as often as they like!”

You can even take the idea a step farther by introducing other “no technology” days such as no cell phones on Monday, no texting on Tuesday, no web surfing on Wednesdays and no memos on Thursday. Imagine…people might actually start talking to each other again!