Lost In emails

The age old problem of emails is now being finally addressed by many companies across the globe. Employees were spending long hours just checking their emails, finding them and replying to them and in the process, losing out on productivity. It is time to think differently.

Thierry Breton, CEO of Atos was in news lately for banning emails in office and replacing it with social media tools, the telephone and face-to-face conversations. It is quite interesting when you dig deep into this. He cited, how emails waste time:
The "deluge" of information that plagues organizations .The need to review "useless" emails and the time it takes to get focused again on important tasks

The "pile" of email that employees end up sorting through after hours and the associated drain on employees’ personal time .If you agree with what he said, I feel you wouldn't agree less that communication management is of utmost importance to any internal communication or while communicating with clients and the outside world. However, not really brought to light or paid significant attention with always too much to do and too little time for it.

Some companies have changed mindset and organised all communications into projects and tasks using various project management solutions that are available on net. They beautiful manage all their work thinking that even communication problem is addressed but emails still exit and a pain point.

TaskTrek is a communication management solution that is available. It collaborate all communication via email and messages grouped under projects and tasks into one. Doing this, seemingly a transition takes place from emails to a more seamless communication (both internal and external) activities wise.Very natural and effective system to help collaborate on work related matters, and in turns helps save time, no duplication of work and more accountability.

Wouldn't it be fabulous if a user gets to view all messages sorted by 'message read but not replied to' or 'messages sent but no response yet' or the 'response time linked for any message'. What if these options are made available to every employee and to managers to view individual reports or team reports from a single window. My answer is, it would definitely shoot up the service levels for any service industry. It is not just email problem but a communication management problem that needs attention, and perfection of this kind that I'm hoping it would come around soon.

You would have never imagined how personal computers, smart phones and the Internet would have impacted your life. To me, technology should be to simplify life. As newer technology presides , there are better ways to do business and compliant ones too. It is natural for us then to unlearn old, and unleash new technologies with the pace of changing times to manage work relationships in our favour.

Certainly, there will be a majority supporting the need for communication management in any office but equally large number of critique to banning of e-mails. This is bound to happen but best is to investigate what sort of tools we could use to replace internal emails and also what sort of management practices we should put in place to ensure normal way to behave in a company