No E-mail Fridays
Posted on February 22nd, 2007 by Carel
Filed under Business, Leadership
A local, Alpharetta, Georgia based company started a national movement to ban e-mail use on Fridays. Greg Dockter of PBD Worldwide Fulfillment Services started the movement and gives the following seven easy steps to get the initiative rolling:
1. Gain support from top level of management. Lead by example.
2. Offer open communication outlets for discussing the implementation of “No E-mail Day” implementation.
3. Communicate the benefits company-wide.
4. Offer alternatives to e-mail (face-to-face, phone, handwritten note, document storage on a shared server, company intranet, etc.)
5. Track e-mail volume to watch the volume decrease; if it doesn’t, you may need another talk with your team.
6. Employees are allowed to send out only external emails. All internal communication is to be done in person or via phone or fax. [Carel’s comment: I would actually recommend that external communications should also be done in person or over the phone on Fridays.]
7. Solicit feedback from employees on a regular basis.
The four key benefits are:
1. Employees stop to think about communication practices, which may lead to better e-mail management on the other days of the week. To encourage this, offer e-mail etiquette training classes.
2. Employees interact more frequently.
3. Employees experience less miscommunication — and snubbed feelings — which often occurs when e-mailing.
4. More productivity. Calling a person takes less time than creating an e-mail.
The information above is an extract from an article posted on the Vistage website. Vistage (formerly TEC) is the world’s largest CEO Membership Organization.
Here are some more links to the story in the media:
Do you have no e-mail Fridays in your company?
