You can't undo it you know!
The Importance of Communication and its link to Employee Wellbeing in the Workplace.
"Engagement is a result of effective communications and have a great feeling of wellbeing in the workplace"
Unless you are actually speaking , much of our communication today is electronic and by the very nature of devices this has speeded up the frequency of it. Leaving not much time to think in some cases!
https://help.idrivehr.com/en/articles/5782244-email-etiquette-in-the-workplace
Most organisations struggle to perfect communication and many don't recognise it to be an issue. Why? Put simply, everyone is different. We see, hear, feel, think differently.
Saying this, if you want to truly embrace employee wellbeing in the workplace, uplift engagement and develop senses of belonging, then communication is very important.
Communication is a vast area to look at so in this article we will focus just on Email Communication.
Did you know here are 347.3 billion emails sent and received each day across the world. This is a 4.3% increase from the previous year. Now consider this there are 147 million adults in the world......
That number of e-mails is bonkers and the high number of emails is increasing, probably down to the number of automated emails being pushed out each year. You buy something on Amazon and your likely to get 4 or 6 emails about it. You can see how these numbers add up!
There are different types of email:
automated responses..... usually drafted carefully and are usually short, with either information or instruction.
sales responses... you visit an online store, website, you walk into your local Tesco store, you give your email to the cashier, you buy online insurance or visit a compare the market web site and bang, you have triggered an e-mail response. There was no hiding you! Even if you did want to hide. Data given by our phones, even when we are not using it can trigger systems to respond to instructions that have been pre-set in them, which can result in an email telling you about the latest offer.
phishing emails/spam... these emails should be deleted. They contain hidden code that either send the recipient back data or information or they can at worst infect your system. So best to not open these whatsoever, never forward these and delete immediately and permanently. Never open an attachment you were not expecting. Always before doing anything check out the recipient e-mail address to ensure validity and ring them to check they sent it if it means opening an attachment.
replies to your own e-mails... Yes people reply to e-mails. People expect a reply the moment they hit the send button, but life does sometimes get in the way which means a response is not necessarily imminent or immediate. Don't lose patience, you don't know what's happening at the other end. There are approximately 3.4 billion phishing emails sent daily.
e-mails you send... When we get time, which these days we have to find and squeeze in, we write to people and the most efficient way to do this other than social media is through e-mail.
Jeff Su YouTube creator advises:
Include a call to action in the subject line (where appropriate)
One e-mail thread per topic - reply to original email change for the topic.
Manage recipients: explain who you are adding or removing.
Start with the main point - Include main point first followed by context. What/When followed by Why.
Summarise in your reply - summarise main points of a sender. For example, Action items followed by Recap
Hyperlink wherever possible - add a short link not the whole long link to the article.
Change default setting to Reply not Reply all
Change undo send options - change this to 30 seconds, Murphy's law (an observation that anything that can go wrong will go wrong.) tells us that you will catch your mistakes 10 seconds after you have sent the email so this gives time to correct mistakes.
For more info on e-mail etiquette you can also look at this great guide we put together. Please share it with others and your colleagues.