The head of one of Europe’s largest information technology services companies is to ban staff from sending each other emails, saying they waste time and are outdated.
From Telegraph UK:
Thierry Breton, CEO of Atos and a former French finance minister, wants a “zero email” policy to be in place within as early as 18 months, arguing that only 10 per cent of the 200 electronic messages his employees receive per day on average turn out to be useful. Instead he wants them to use an instant messaging and a Facebook-style interface.
Staff spend between 5-20 hours handling emails, said Mr Breton.
“It is not normal that some of our fellow employees spend hours in the evening dealing with their emails,” he said.
“The email is no longer the appropriate (communication) tool.
“The deluge of information will be one of the most important problems a company will have to face (in the future). It is time to think differently.” Reading useless messages is terrible for concentration, as it takes 64 seconds to get back on the ball after doing so, according to a recent study by the social and business responsibility watchdog ORSE. “Poorly controlled, the email can become a devastating tool,” it warned.
Very very true. Looking around in any office today one would be astonished at the absolute waste of time. Some staff, trying to show off how busy they are, are copying scores of colleagues, who do not really need to be involved. Many e-mails are sent to ‘all staff worldwide’, sometimes numbering thousands, each one of which will need time to open the message to see that it does not concern them. And we call this ‘progress’. Good that someone takes action…