Business

Find a way to work with the email instead of trying to do away with it

EMAIL is a technology that is now ripe for disruption. Since the early 1990s, we have used it excessively and ended up with hugely bloated inbox folders that have contributed to inefficient communication systems.

As attachments have increased one-hundred-fold in size in the last 10 years, it is no surprise that new alternatives are starting to appear. As team communications have become a necessary part of modern day business, managing projects applications are now appearing in abundance that claim to solve the issue of bloated email folders.

Some claim that the future of email urgently needs an overhaul. "It's an epidemic," says Lacy Roberson, a director of learning and organisational development at eBay. At most companies, it's a struggle "to get work done on a daily basis, with all these things coming at you," she says.

Office workers are interrupted, often by their own choice, every three minutes, studies have found, with numerous distractions coming in both digital and human forms. Once thrown off track, it can take some 23 minutes for a worker to return to the original task, says Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, who studies digital distraction.

One such application that claims to seriously improve team communications and reduce email dependence is Slack. It makes it easier to collaborate, to talk in real time, and to differentiate between important and unimportant conversations. It is just one of many companies or platforms that promise to supersede email, like Yammer and Huddle.

Outside of the work environment, a raft of new and better ways to connect with family and friends have developed large communities of users. Facebook is the obvious suspect, but texting, Google Chat, and WhatsApp are all replacing email conversations. These have become so prevalent for getting peoples' attention quicker because we all know it can sometimes take hours or even days for some email responses to come back.

As well as these tools, the growth in corporate 'Unified Communication' tools, which allow for chat, presence and video calling, all contribute to the death by a thousand cuts of email. It would seem that email is going out with a whimper, not a bang.

It does however remain as the de-facto "asynchronous virtual communication channel."

The alternative view on all of this is that email is here to stay for the long term because it is so resilient. Its prevalence on every device is one part of this argument. There's no need to download anything, no need to learn a new app or system, no need to persuade your colleagues to use it.

Email is also less interruptive than a phone call. The only other mode of communication that reaches everybody is the phone. But placing a phone call requires the other person to be available and willing to talk, right then.

Email is also exceptionally flexible. Most of the tools that aim to replace email require you to do things in a certain way.

It also a measurable part of work. Email isn't just for communication. It's part of work. If your boss sends an email, you pretty much have to reply. It becomes part of business processes.

There are some ways email is used that aren't perfect. For instance, a lot of people use their email inbox as a to-do list, even though it's hard to organise and items sometimes fall through the cracks. Here, a tool built for workflow, like Asana, may end up being better. But for day-today communication, email is not going away.

For business owners and managers in Northern Ireland, it's well worth investing the time to understand how the new breed of applications can help improve team communications in your business.

A pilot with a small project team could help prove the benefits and allow your business to decide if significant efficiencies could be gained. But for now at least, email isn't going away.

* Patrick McAliskey is managing director of Novosco, an indigenous Northern Ireland IT infrastructure company with offices in Belfast, Dublin and Birmingham. It employs more than 100 people and works for leading organisations across the UK and Ireland, including health trusts, councils and other organisations. It was ranked as one of the UK's top companies to work for in 2014 by The Sunday Times.