intelligence
Mail slave

You know the feeling. You are fully focused on some task or another, but as soon as the email icon pops up on your PC or mobile, your curiosity gets the better of you. You stop to check what it is.

“Most of us are hooked to our email systems. I am that kind of person, unfortunately. Even when I am stuck in a traffic jam, I'm reading or writing emails on my mobile terminal. The stupid blinking red light is always reminding me: “You've got mail!” IT director of Romanian aluminium producer, Alro, Yugo
Neumorni commented.

“Email is extremely useful but it is also a bad thing, a time consuming instrument, a tool that depersonalises each of us. It's like a drug. First thing in the morning, 'let's see my new messages'. Unfortunately, most of us might not be able to survive without it,” Neumorni added. Corporate users send and receive an average of 133 messages per day, a recent Sophos survey has found, and that number is expected to reach 160 by 2009. A Radicati Group survey expects that in 2009, the average corporate email user will spend 41 per cent of the working day managing emails.

In an effort to combat this dependency, British Energy, along with a number of other high-profile organisations, has introduced Email-free Fridays, which forbids all employees from sending internal emails on Fridays. “Some people felt email ruled their working life. Others felt trapped at having to constantly monitor emails 24x7, which is not good for anyone,” former CIO, British Energy, Ian Campbell said.
“Employees all over the planet, in every kind of organisation, complain of that. It is a universal affliction,” agreed principal engineer, Intel IT, Nathan Zeldes. “Email is an excellent technology and we could not work without it, but its misuse and overuse do exact a heavy toll.”

The company is currently running a controlled pilot evaluation on a group of 150 people, who are encouraged to avoid sending internal emails Fridays. “It is not at all about banning email on Friday, it is about encouraging preference for face-to-face and phone communications within an organic team on that day – where this makes sense”.

British Energy also decided to take this measure “to encourage people to get a balance with more face-to-face working”. But not everyone was happy, Campbell noted. “Some found it very difficult and claimed to 'like' getting emails.”

Effectively managing the sheer bulk of email traffic coming through is also becoming a challenge for many  IT departments. Many are caught between the costs of archiving and the potential costs of not complying with business correspondence storing regulations.

The constant battle to keep spam out and legitimate emails in is the other obvious  issue causing departmental headaches. “The increasing amount of spam and junk email is causing us a lot of pain, as are the security threats and the measures that have to be taken – hackers are becoming smarter day by day. And email traffic continuously demands upgrades or new hardware requirements. But there is no sign that it will decrease anytime soon,” Neumorni said.

But, according to the Radicati Group, “the primary culprit in this mess is not commercial spam, but more often mail exchanged between people in the same organisation”. Hence  Email-free Fridays.

“We have become too dependent on our email system but it is solely our decision to successfully manage this. It is a matter of choice and it depends on personality,” Neumorni maintained.