When is email an inappropriate method of communication

Leadership and communications expert, David Grossman shares high-level tips on leadership effectiveness, internal communications, employee engagement, and a variety of other topics on the minds of leaders and communicators.

The Grossman Group N. May St. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy. You'll get suggestions anyone can implement to avoid email abuses and fix bad habits. Before sending emails to recipients, check for proper grammar and spelling.

With the prevalence of email and texting among employees, telephone etiquette is sometimes lost or never learned. Inappropriate telephone communication ranges from rudeness to poor customer service. Instruct employees to speak politely, be honest, avoid putting calls on speakerphone and be patient, even with rude customers.

Cell phones enable employees to conduct business in places other than the office, but give thought to surroundings when taking or making business calls. Loud background noises can be distracting and annoying during an important call. Most forms of texting are inappropriate to use in a business setting. The informality reflects on the professionalism of your company, and it's far too easy to create misunderstandings with texting.

An email or telephone call is a better method for scheduling appointments, making requests or communicating an important idea. Texting in business situations is often done surreptitiously at inappropriate times, such as during meetings, and should be discouraged.

Strive for clarity and brevity in your writing. Have you ever sent an email that caused confusion and took at least one more communication to straighten out? Miscommunication can occur if a message is unclear, disorganized, or just too long and complex for readers to easily follow. Here are some steps you can take to ensure that your message is understood:. Format your message so that it is easy to read. Use white space to visually separate paragraphs into distinct blocks of text.

Bullet important details so that they are easy to pick out. Use bold face type or capital letters to highlight critical information, such as due dates.

Re-read messages before you send them. Check your grammar, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. If your email program supports it, use spelling and grammar checking tools. Try reading your message out loud to help you catch any mistakes or awkward phrasing that you might otherwise miss.

How does the tone of the messages differ? What are the elements that contribute its clarity? If you were Professor Jones and you received both messages, how would you respond to each one? Would using 3 sources be OK? Can I come by your office tomorrow at pm to talk to you about my question? Please let me know if that fits your schedule.

If not, I could also come by on Friday after Here are two versions of an email from a supervisor, Jane Doe, to a group of her employees. Are answers to important questions buried under long threads? If you answered yes to any of these, you probably already know that email is ineffective for a lot of the day to day communication we do at work.

While it is a great tool for certain types of communication, such as reaching out to third-party vendors or contacting customers, using it as the default tool for getting work done is not ideal. The following eight points reveal why email is ineffective for productivity as well as a big source of frustration and an exclusionary communication method for deskless employees. The average worker will receive of those emails each day, of which only 38 percent will contain important , relevant information.

When people are bombarded with all of this superfluous information, they simply bulk delete or skim through, making it easy to miss important information that is buried. The McKinsey Global Institute found that the average employee spends 13 hours a week checking, reading and responding to emails— eating up 28 percent of the work week. With less than half of emails deserving attention and many going unread, this is a big chunk of wasted time.