Dealing with emails can be one of one of the biggest drains on a small business owner’s time. According to McKinsey’s 2012 Social Economy report, the average user will spend two hours and 14 minutes every workday on email, reading some 114 emails: hardly an efficient use of business time.
Staying on top of emails as they land can detract from more pressing issues in the company. Letting them mount up over several hours can mean important messages get missed.
As a main means of contact between a company and its employees, suppliers and customers, emails are likely to be travelling through cyberspace for the foreseeable future. What small business owners need are some tips on how to manage them more efficiently.
Practice inbox zero
There are times when the sheer number of emails sitting in your inbox is quite overwhelming. The simple solution is to reduce them to zero. Do this by deleting any emails you’ve already dealt with, and only moving onto the next one when you’ve done whatever needs to be done for the last one.
Conquering the ‘CC’ problem
A large proportion of emails in your primary inbox are likely to be ones you’ve been CC’d or copied into, and therefore only marginally relevant to you. Nevertheless, the CC phenomenon can mean people waste a lot of time spend reading emails that have nothing to do with the work they are currently focused on.
“To combat the scourge of the CC line, add a rule to your email that moves emails where your name is not in the ‘To’ box to another folder,” says Orlando Scott-Cowley, a cyber security expert at Mimecast.
And conversely, think about the people who you copy into your emails.
Timetable email management
Do you respond to the ping of another incoming email by opening it and responding to it straight away? That is the surest way to let emails distract you from other pressing matters and eat into your time. A more efficient approach is to set aside certain times during the day to deal with what’s arrived, for example, mid morning, just before and or after lunch, and at the end of the day.
Instead of reading and responding to emails throughout the day, Barnaby Lashbrooke, founder of virtual workforce platform Time Etc, waits until the evening and tackles them all in one go.
He says: “Email correspondence takes up a tremendous amount of time, and most are not urgent. If someone needs your immediate attention, they will pick up the phone and call you.”
Depending on your work environment it may be possible to set up your email programme to receive emails only at certain times of the day. It’s a case of trying a few different times and seeing what works best for you and your business.
Have a proper filing system
Setting up ‘rules’ so that emails go into the appropriate folder will make it easier to find everything quickly, should you need to refer back to an earlier communication. Having emails grouped thematically also saves time sifting through the various email folders.
Nicki Cresswell, wellbeing training coordinator at CABA, which runs courses on effectiveness in the workplace, says: “Mark emails you need to attend to as unread – delete or file non urgent emails and flag important ones so they are easy to spot in your inbox. That way they won’t get lost among all the others, and they function as a to-do list.”
Standardise your subject headings
This is helpful if you send a lot of emails and need to check back through them regularly for reference. Trying to find a specific email can be like searching for a needle in a haystack. When writing emails, use key words in the subject line. Introduce some kind of standardisation by titling them all ‘Company Name_Enquiry Response’, which would make finding the particular email from that company easier.
Insist that everyone in your team uses the same subject heading, so nobody misses anything important, and make it as specific as possible
Turn off all your email notifications
The amount of time wasted because of text and email interruptions is huge, and audible or visual alerts on your phone or your computer screen telling you another message has just can be the worst.
In reality there is rarely any real justification for needing to know the second a new email arrives in the inbox, but with 24/7 technology, people have simply got used to that level of constant connectivity and become increasingly dependant on it.
Many of the people that Andrea Osborne, from lifestyle management firm Cushion the Impact, has trained are initially resistant to the idea, but almost uniformly they are convinced afterwards.
She says: “So I had to bribe one client by promising her a meal in the restaurant of her choice if it improved her productivity. When she rang three days later, I mentally checked my bank account, but in the end she took me out for a meal as she feels so much less bound to emails nowadays.”
Reduce your incoming emails
An easy way to reduce email volume is to hit the ‘unsubscribe’ link on unwanted or irrelevant media releases and newsletters that you delete without ever reading. Turn off notifications from social media platforms like LinkedIn or Twitter or Facebook to stop the endless emails about connections having work anniversaries, getting a new job, or a new connection.
Never hide behind email
It is not unheard of for people to send an email as a way to avoid confrontation or tricky face-to-face situations. Bouncing out an email keeps them at arm’s length from a potential source of discomfort.
In fact, using email in this way is only going to lead to prolonged exchange, when the matter could be resolved in a few minutes by picking up the phone.
Sarah Pinch, managing director of Pinch Point Communications says: “When you do that, it’s often really welcomed by your correspondent and takes minutes, instead of days to get an issue tied up in red tape and sent around various departments and involved parties.”
Content on this page is paid for and produced to a brief agreed with E.ON, sponsor of the Efficiency hub.
