Email... #blogjune

As I finally posted my #blogjune post last night, I realised... I hadn't checked my work emails all weekend!

Yes, I'm one of those people... I do check my work emails at home.  I'm working on a project at the moment and the main vendor has offices in Ontario, Indiana and Tennessee so I've gotten into the habit of checking emails on a Saturday morning.  Saturday morning will pick up any emails sent on their Friday.  But last Saturday I had to take my daughter to the dentist at 9am and I had an afternoon appointment and Sunday was also busy... yadda, yadda... so, no email checking.

Did the world end? NO.

It got me thinking... maybe I should cut back on the email checking out of hours?

Email, and our ever-increasing access to it has certainly become an issue for workplaces.  Some of the moves in Europe, such as the ban by Volkswagen on delivery to Blackberry devices out of hours have been widely reported.  My Google search today shows a similar approach in France. I wouldn't normally recommend an article from the Times of India, but this one covers the issues well.

Interestingly, when I searched work emails at home on Google, the bulk of the hits were about how to set it up!

One of the business sites I like is Inc.com (well, mainly I follow them on Twitter).

It was very interesting to check out their site archive on 'email'.

Back in 2011, they reported on the company that outlawed email.   Klick, a Toronto-based digital marketing agency was the company  in question. Klick CEO Leerom Segal says:
“In the very early days of Klick we started to recognize some basic challenges with email and wanted to find a better solution... While email makes for a decent communication tool with clients, internally it doesn’t facilitate collaboration and basic workflow. Email has no intelligent mechanisms for prioritization, lacks context, lacks a framework for knowledge management, and saps accountability.”

I tend to agree!

But for most of us, outlawing email isn't an option.

We can 'kill' some of our email traffic.  I love these email "killing" tips from company founders!

We can make email more productive ("Key to Email Productivity? Better Subject Lines") - and I love these ideas! Wonder if I can implement any of them?

I once had an academic tell me that there is no such thing as 'work-life balance'.  That sometimes, work is our focus 100% and sometimes 'life/family/whatever' is our focus 100%.  I get what he was saying... but I still think there's a need for us to be aware of work life balance and of how modern technology blurs the lines between time spend "at" (on?) work, and time spent on non-work.

I'll give the final word here to Suzanne Lucas from her article "France Wants to Ban Work Emails After 6 PM. Should You?".  Lucas writes:
"Long hours are legendary in startups, and many entrepreneurs wear them as a badge of honor. If you're running a startup, you might wish to encourage your people to put down the smartphone now and then and spend some time with their family and friends. But you have to balance that with the knowledge that working harder does get you ahead. And it's a tough world out there."


Related links:
Volkswagen turns off Blackberry email after work hours. 
23 December 2011.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-16314901

Lost In Translation: French Rule On Work Email Covers Fewer Workers
by KRISHNADEV CALAMUR
April 10, 2014
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/04/10/301418591/mon-dieu-no-more-work-email-at-home-for-some-french-workers

Ban on after-hours work emails tackles burnout
AFP | May 27, 2014, 02.27 PM IST
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/jobs/Ban-on-after-hours-work-emails-tackles-burnout/articleshow/35629464.cms

Haden, Jeff. (1 Dec 2011). The Company That Outlawed Email. http://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/the-company-that-outlawed-email.html

Dumaine, Brian. (May 2014). How to Escape Email Hell: Three founders and their e-mail-killing tips. http://www.inc.com/magazine/201405/brian-dumaine/email-management-tips.html

McKeown, Les. (30 Jan 2014). Key to Email Productivity? Better Subject Lines. http://www.inc.com/les-mckeown/3-simple-letters-that-will-increase-your-email-productivity-immediately.html

Lucas, Suzanne. (10 Apr 2014). France Wants to Ban Work Emails After 6 PM. Should You? http://www.inc.com/suzanne-lucas/should-work-emails-be-banned-after-6pm.html

#blogjune