Corporate e-mail training ‘sets people free’

Do you ever sit down to check your e-mail “for a minute,” and the next thing you know, two hours have passed?

You’ve got company. American professionals spend over 40 percent of the workday on e-mail and information storage, and consider a third of the time wasted, according to research by Cohesive Knowledge Solutions, a Guilford, Conn., corporate training firm.

That amounts to $300 billion in lost productivity, said CKS chief executive Mike Song, co-author of “The Hamster Revolution: How to Manage Your E-mail Before it Manages You.”

“People have reached the breaking point,” Song said.

The burden on personnel and computer servers has some companies training their work forces to use e-mail more efficiently. Last year, 42 percent of companies surveyed conducted e-mail training, up from 24 percent five years earlier, according to the ePolicy Institute in Columbus, Ohio.

The results are striking. On average, one 45-minute CKS seminar saved Novartis Oncology employees eight days a year, and 75 minutes of training returned 11 days a year to the typical Capital One worker.

“Few investments in business … have that kind of payback,” said Nic Oatridge, global head of information technology for Novartis Oncology in Florham Park, N.J. “People are saying we’ve set them free.”

Novartis relies on e-mail to connect colleagues working in different time zones around the globe. But the messages demand more and more time and distract workers from business priorities, Oatridge said.

Worldwide, e-mail volume is increasing more than 20 percent annually, with 135 billion e-mails sent each day in 2005, according to Radicati Group statistics compiled by eMarketer.com.

Employees clearly need more than checklists of good e-mail practices, Oatridge said — they need coaching to recognize their own role in the problem. “One of the most powerful messages we sent people was that if they sent less messages they would probably get less messages,” he said.

Song’s advice:

Consider whether an e-mail is truly needed and whether it’s targeted to the proper recipient or recipients. Are you hitting “reply all” or “cc:” unnecessarily? Would telephoning or walking to the person’s office be more appropriate?

Write a strong subject line explaining the e-mail’s purpose and what action the recipient should take. Song starts with one of these words: Action, Info, Request, Confirmed or Delivery.

You can even put the entire message in the subject line, and include EOM — for end of message — to signal that the e-mail can be deleted without being opened. Similarly, NRN means no reply is needed.

In the body of the message, be clear and concise. Song teaches an ABC format: Action, Background and Close.