Email must become fun again
Coping with a flood of emails doesn’t only cost you a lot of time but is also extremely bothersome. Time to do something about it?
At the beginning of the eighties Werner Zorn received the first email sent to a German email address at the University of Karlsruhe. While prior to its development, messages and data still had to be exchanged with great effort via post, telephone or disk, with the innovative new communication channel email it was suddenly possible for information to reach its recipient around the clock — no matter where the sender and recipient were currently located. Admittedly, the transmission of information initially still took around 30 minutes, significantly longer than today. Yet email accelerated business communication enormously. Email was fun and simplified life at work. No wonder then that email soon counted amongst the most important means of business communication.
Today communication via email, especially at work, is no longer as much fun as it once was. Its good image is fast becoming a thing of the past, and the means of communication once so dearly loved is now often perceived as being disruptive. One reason amongst many for this is the ever increasing digitalization of the workplace, as highlighted in a recent study by German corporation GFU (“Corporation of supporting the consumer electronics in Germany”). A wide range of digital attack mechanisms such as virus, spam or phishing, also make it more difficult for companies to utilize email. The communication channel can thus no longer be used in the carefree way that it was in the early days.
Coping with the flood of emails takes valuable time
Just a few years ago emails could only reach their recipients when they had started up their computers and established an online connection. If the PC stayed off then no message was received. Nowadays mobile devices such as smart phones or tablets ensure that managers and employees are online everywhere around the clock — meaning that they are also reachable outside of regular office hours. Today 42% of Germans also read business emails in their leisure time, and 28 percent even answer them. Day after day managers are bombarded with a huge amount of emails. As a result, the processing of emails demands significantly more time today than only a few years ago.
Email as a stress factor
Constant availability via email is however not only time-intensive, but also causes a great deal of stress. As a result, business people are increasingly overloaded, and absence from work due to mental illness has increased dramatically. Politicians and industry leaders have already recognized this issue and set up the first initiatives to block business emails after office hours. In this way, the Federal Labor Ministry already committed itself in 2013, then still under the leadership of Ursula von der Leyen, to only disturb staff after hours by phone or email in absolutely exceptional cases. At Volkswagen, already half an hour after office hours no emails are delivered. Deutsche Telekom, E.on, Puma and BMW have instituted similar limitations. Federal Labor Minister Andrea Nahles is currently considering an anti-stress decree on the federal level. The aim is to clearly regulate at which times companies are allowed to contact their staff.
No emails after office hours
In the IT sector too, the issue of email stress is increasingly under discussion. The first IT service providers have already developed initial solutions to enable a substantial reduction in email stress. For instance, certain features allow flexible time intervals to be defined as “Quiet Times” such as holidays or weekends. Within these time periods, employees do not receive their mails externally. Incoming messages are instead stored in the data center of the provider in the interim. Following the end of the defined time interval the user automatically receives all of the messages which have been held back during that time. This “Quiet Time” can be set up for individual recipients or groups of recipients, meaning that support staff, for instance, can remain available around the clock. Using forwarding functions for emails with higher priority also ensures that very important messages are not blocked. Internal email policies can thus be implemented very easily.
Automated inbox assistant reduces email stress
Especially for managers who have assistants but require more privacy, an inbox-assist function is also highly suitable. This regulates incoming email traffic and delivers private emails or VIP messages exclusively to the address recipient, while normal business correspondence is automatically forwarded to assistance staff. This enables CEOs, heads of department and other managers to maintain the necessary privacy, while also unburdening them from less critical correspondence. Assistants can still sort and process the inbox without having to access the mailbox of the supervisor. In the best case, addresses precluded from forwarding can quickly and easily be defined — for instance via a web-based administration portal. In addition to entering individual addresses, an ideal solution allows an unlimited number of address books to be synchronized automatically for instance with Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes, Apple iCloud or Google contacts.
Less stress with maximum security
Email for business communication poses huge challenges, not only for employees but also IT departments. Email is a popular gateway used by attackers for spam, phishing, virus and other malware. The private use of business mail clients and access via private smart phones, tablets (bring your own device) or external PCs, for example in the home office, also constitute an increased security risk. In order to safeguard the exchange of sensitive data accordingly, and to protect the company comprehensively against cyber attacks, the deployment of dependable security systems is crucial. Companies are, moreover, required to have clear guidelines for the use of communication channels and to raise awareness for these issues among their staff in appropriate training courses. Modern email security services therefore not only offer valuable assistance in keeping the stress factor in email communication as low as possible, but also help in the implementation of a comprehensive email security strategy.
