You get to the office, settle in to tackle the day’s workload, and start checking email. An hour a half later, you’ve barely made a dent.
If you are working at a company with over 20 staff, statistics show that a whopping 46 percent, So nearly half of your daily inbox, could be sent from an internal source. The next inbox filler is where you are just copied in on a message, and another 47 were documents for his review.
Reorganising interoffice communication can go a long way to trimming your inbox and make you more efficient as a company. The trick is to redistribute many of these brief emails on different technology platforms to which they are better suited.
Here are three of the most common along with a more efficient alternative.
Confirmation of receipt or status update on a task.
Solution: Rather than a one-word email, send your colleague an instant message. “Walking around the office now, you can see everyone using instant messenger to communicate. Systems like SalesForce Chatter are ideal for this.
You want to send a colleague a quick lunch or coffee invite.
Solution: Make a quick phone call. You’re more likely to reach your recipient immediately, and you won’t take up unnecessary inbox space (or pull attention away from more important email messages).
Sending an important document to multiple recipients.
Solution: Create a Google doc and invite all concerned parties to view it. There’s no need to email documents with collaborative editing in Google Docs. Or use systems like Huddle which enable team and company wide collaboration.