Please don’t e-mail me

Citation

(2012), "Please don’t e-mail me", International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, Vol. 61 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijppm.2012.07961daa.005

Please don’t e-mail me

Article Type: From: International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, Volume 61, Issue 4

Global technology giant Atos plans to stop using e-mail internally by 2014. Atos, a French firm with 80,000 employees around the world, announced the plan – described by some critics as “stupid” and by others as “ingenious” – earlier this year.

The company said an internal review found that on average, employees spend 15 to 20 hours a week on e-mail, and only 15 per cent of the e-mails are actually useful.

It also found that younger workers barely used e-mail, relying more on social media, said Holger Kormann, general manager of Atos Canada, which has 250 employees.

The company is currently in the early stages of creating awareness of the initiative and introducing replacement tools such as instant messaging, video conferencing, Facebook, and collaboration software such as Live Meeting.

Already, he said, instant messaging has proven to be more effective for time-sensitive communications, and Kormann has reduced his own e-mail load by 20 per cent.

Far be it from me to criticise the initiative but doesn’t it just mean that employees spend time of social media messaging rather then e-mail […] or am I missing something (Co-editor).