What is Email Management?
Effective Email Management and Email Management systems within your business can ensure efficient email practices are used to minimise the negative effects that email handling can have on the productivity and job satisfaction of your staff.
In this post we provide examples of great Email Management strategies that can be easily implemented within your organisation.
In the average workplace, dealing with emails can account for up to 30% of an employee’s workday, more if effective Email Management strategies are not used. As email is currently the industry standard for business communication across the majority of organisations, appropriate standards and policies must be applied to the classification, storage, and destruction of these documents/records.
Email Management involves the systematic control of the quality and quantity of electronic messages that are sent from within, and received by, an organisation.
The vast quantities of emails held in inboxes, sent folders, and deleted items folders put the organisation at risk and adversely impact the performance of email servers in the organisation.
Organisations have been looking towards Email Management systems to take control of their information and remove the records from email repositories. This allows them to meet their legal preservation requirements in the event of litigation and government investigations, decreasing the effort and cost in responding to eDiscovery and disclosure.
Email Management systems centrally capture emails created and received by employees.
Common methods for managing emails include:
- Using a classification scheme
- Applying retention periods or access controls
- Capturing Metadata
- Email archiving
At their most basic, these solutions will simply copy or move the messages from one location to another. Using an Email Management solution in conjunction with a Records Management program with organisation wide policies and procedures will ensure your staff are accurately and efficiently classifying, storing and disposing of documents/records.
Why is Email Management Important?
Having a specific Email Management system in place can not only increase the efficiency throughout your organisation, it can also help to consolidate previously ineffective processes into one clear, unified procedure.
Tips and Reminders for Email Management
- Give yourself a time limit
Limit the overall time you spend in your inbox. The next time you check your mail, time yourself and see how long you take to process, read, reply, and sort through your mail.
Use this as a gauge for how long you should assign to responding to emails, set an appointment in your calendar, and only check your email during the scheduled times.
- Prioritise
Scan through your inbox quickly and decide which emails require an immediate response, and which emails can wait.
- Create Templates
If you look through your sent folder, you will most likely find a trend in things you reply to. You can use templates made in programs such as inMailX to speed up the reply process. As you reply you can customise your templates to fit the needs of the original email.
Staff that are unable to achieve control over their inbox feel overwhelmed and are unable to focus on the task at hand. Without a clear Email Management system, you are opening your organisation up to the potential of low productivity, poor or no retention/disposal process and non-compliance with no control over where your information is being stored.
Once an Email Management system is in place, the control is back in your hands.
How many times have you checked your emails today?
If you feel that you could benefit from some extra help with your organisations Email Management, Business Classification Scheme, or Retention and Disposal Schedules contact FYB today at info@fyb.com.au or call 1800 392 392.
