Email has become so central to business culture that each employee can expect to receive almost 100 new emails every single day. With a constant flow of new information, invites, comments, and replies to attend to, it’s no wonder that the average worker will spend 28% of their time at work reading emails.
Over a quarter of the working week on one simple task seems ridiculous before you consider just how integral emails are. However, this statistic can be reduced by businesses that instill effective email practices in the workplace. By teaching employees how to write and structure impactful and concise emails, you’ll be able to save time and increase efficiency.
In this article, we’ll dive into the most effective strategies you can employ to streamline email communication at work. From how to craft new emails to tips to increase reading speed and decrease total time spent on emails each week, we’ll cover it all. Let’s dive right in.
How To Structure Effective Emails Between Coworkers
Especially for newer employees, emails may seem like an incredibly formal method of communication, even between coworkers. With the need to sign off and include a short introduction to each email, they can seem to waste more time and harm more than they help.
However, when your coworkers start to actually make the most of emails within their teams, it can provide a number of benefits:
- Direct – Emails are a direct form of communication, allowing you to get in contact with another member of your team in seconds. This can be a great way of coordinating projects, discussing ideas, and simply keeping others in the loop.
- Network – Within emails, you’re able to include people on the email chain via BCC and CC. These features let you include others on the email chain without needing them to respond. This allows you to keep others in the loop on ongoing projects with ease.
- Documentation – Emails provide a permanent copy of previous conversations. When documenting change over time or needing to log project details, this permanent record can become incredibly useful to all parties involved.
However, businesses are only able to obtain these handy features if they use email effectively. There are a number of strategies that businesses can use to streamline how effective their email communication is.
Function Over Form
The main reason that emails end up wasting time is due to the expected level of formality they entail. Especially between coworkers, you shouldn’t waste time with long introductions and conclusions. After you’ve messaged someone from your work for the first time, your business should allow people to remove all superfluous elements from your email.
By getting to the core of the email and removing the need for niceties, you’re able to streamline how coworkers talk to each other. Outline in your company communication guidelines the fact that emails should be as short as possible. Focus on getting to your point within the first line of your email.
Not only does this allow people to skim your emails faster, but it also means that the core purpose of your email will come next to the subject in their inbox. Around the first 10 words of an email are displayed here, which allows you to get an idea of what the email entails from the first moment.
While small changes will only lead to small improvements, these will snowball into major time savings over months and years.
Ensure People Use Work Email Signatures
When someone joins a new company, the business should endeavor to bring them up to speed in terms of the typical communication practices that they use. One way of getting everyone on the same page as quickly as possible is to ensure that all employees use email signatures on all of their outgoing emails.
For new employees, email signatures will ensure that the recipient of their emails understands who they are without having to ask. Even within the same team, it can be confusing when new people join the company. By using email signatures, everyone will know who this new person is and will be able to include them in the daily workflow as soon as possible.
Secondly, for the new employee, having email signatures on all of the emails they receive will allow them to understand all of their team members’ roles and positions in the company. This strategy will help everyone to feel more confident when communicating via email. Especially with the vast array of exchange signature management tools available to you, this is one strategy that you can incorporate into your workflows with ease.
Understand When Not to Use Email
Another important aspect of great email writing is to know when email isn’t the correct medium for what you want to achieve. Most of the time, email communication follows a fairly standard format that has lots of added formality. Even for shorter emails, you’ll typically have an introduction to the email and other superfluous aspects that make them longer than a short message.
If you’re sending an email that is only a few words, or really only has a short idea you want to express, then you should consider using another one of your company’s available mediums. For example, jumping on Slack or Teams to reply to a short email will allow you to instantly chat with that person. Instead of writing an entire email that might simply take up space, you can write a short message via an instant messenger.
By using email only when you have something more important to say, you make sure that whenever someone receives an email from you, they know that they should read it. If you send out emails that only consist of a few words, then people might start skimming over your emails. Be sure to make use of alternative methods of communication in order to maintain the quality of all emails you send out to your coworkers.
Final Thoughts
Email is a vital form of communication in the office, and one that you’ll find yourself repeatedly using over your working life. You’re unlikely to spend a whole day working without sending at least one email to your coworkers. Understanding exactly how to craft effective emails will save you time and streamline communication in your workplace.
By creating guides that your employees can use when they start at your company, you’ll be able to bring everyone onto the same page in terms of email communication. Over time, this will help to increase how effectively your office communicates, shares ideas, and keeps records of information within the company.