42 Degrees - Business from a different angle

Some people use emails like oxygen, copying in all and sundry in ever-increasing spirals of correspondence. Others have lives and just ignore them. Guy Browning reports

Email was supposed to give us the paperless office but someone forgot to explain this to the boss who still arranges for his secretary to print out all his messages and leave them in his in-tray. He then dictates a reply and gets his secretary to send a reply on 'the email' just to show that he is coping with the white heat of technology. Remember, this is the same man who gave the 'Our Future is Technology' speech at the annual conference.

Email buffs have little abbreviations such as IMHO, which stands for 'In My Humble Opinion'. Sadly, these people don't seem to understand that no one in real life actually says "in my humble opinion", so it really doesn't need abbreviating. They also use signs such as  :-)  which, if you turn your computer on its side, looks like a smiley face. Emails from advertising creative departments are usually signed off  *}-§  - this means I am lying on my back, utterly stoned, with my stomach making strange gurgling noises.

Working in the post room is not generally a career choice for most people. Yet with the epidemic of email most people spend half their life slaving away in their own personal computer post room. If you're going to get more job satisfaction, you need to get out of the electronic post room and do something more interesting. Real communication happens in three dimensions. You need to see how people react to what you're saying and that means seeing their body language, their eye contact and them bursting into tears.

Many emails are biodegradable. If you let them sink to the bottom of the pile and go unanswered, they will eventually become irrelevant. To some people, doing this might seem like just about the most daring and suicidal thing you could possibly do in an office but if something really matters the person who sent it will eventually speak to you to ask you about it. And then real communication can begin, often in your industrial tribunal for gross negligence.

Some really annoying people insist on asking for a receipt to show that their email has been received. These are the same people who complain that they've got 500 emails in their mailbox, which is not surprising as they've generated two-thirds of them. Don't ask for receipts and don't send receipts. If it really matters that much that someone gets something, why not go and ask them?

Sitting at your computer is a lonely business and email is a way of pretending that you're actually in a social environment. You can also flirt or gossip online while pretending to work. Some people generate an email so that they will get more emails in return. If you want to have a rich social life sitting at your computer, by all means send lots of fun, chatty emails. If you want to have a rich social life in the real world, turn your computer off and click through to the real world.

Many people send emails in order to cover their hind portion. Often seven or eight people will be copied in on the email to make sure every possible person who had any conceivable reason to be interested is informed. Remember that you are generally empowered to use reasonable authority in your job without getting lots of people's permission. And if you make really big mistakes then a few covering emails aren't going to help you.

There are certain golden rules with emails that save a lot of bother: try to reply as soon as you read an email otherwise you'll be reading it twice; always read what you've written before you send it; if in doubt, delete; never confuse the forward and reply buttons; only use Copy To All where every single person really needs to know; never forward anything you wouldn't pin up on your wall.