Work email gossip and its effect on team morale

Post written by Maya Pillai.

It is a fact that people love to talk about other people and they also show a great interest in hearing about the business of other people. It's simply human nature. Recently, I had the opportunity of watching an American movie named 'Gossip' directed by Davis Guggenheim. Though it had nothing to do with work email gossip, it showed how a rumor or gossip that is nurtured and dispersed efficiently can become a mighty weapon. If you are working in an organization, think  for a moment how gossipy emails effect you and the morale of your team members. 

You will never guess that on an average a corporate email user sends and receives 112 emails everyday. This was reported in a study by Georgia Tech. The study also revealed that 15% of the work related emails can be gossip and this is prevalent at all levels of the corporate hierarchy.

Remember, the term 'Gossip' is a negative word and therefore we are likely to give such emails a negative interpretation. Curbing work email gossip will not only decrease the clutter in your internal mailbox but also increases the productivity of yourself and those around you. 

We spend most of our waking hours at our work place. Can you imagine how highly damaging it can be to be in a place where whispers about your personal/professional life are circulated? Gossip emails can lead to a total breakdown of your performance which in turn will affect the team and the project you are working on. 

Your work life is likely to become uncomfortable and you will find it difficult to work in proximity with your team mates. Misunderstanding between the colleagues and team member can then result in workplace conflict. This in turn has a negative impact on the working relationships with your team members. And if the morale of the team is affected, it can lead to increased episodes of absenteeism and stress-induced sickness. 

While the best defence against a culture of negative workplace gossip developing, is simply not to get involved, we've found that our usage of team based email is an active tool in fighting a gossip culture. Get your system administrator to configure internal mailing system such as unifiedinbox.com where all the team mails can be accessed by the team members. When there is this level of transparency where mails can be read by the members of the team, you'll find there will be a drastic reduction in both inbox clutter and work email gossip. 

 

Surviving your first Startup Weekend (and loving it!)

They say startup weekends are intensely addictive and it just takes one to start what could become a lifelong habit but for those about to set out on their first startup weekend, what can they learn from those who have gone before to make the finishing line in the best possible shape?

The organisers will send you their own list. And these are all important - bring them all but what I found was that the veterans brought a bit more than that. And I made a note that next time I'd be one of those savvy veterans bringing the following:

• multi-plug – one office, two power outlets, six laptops – is there any further elaboration needed?

• alternative internet – internet is provided but do you really want to sit through a session of being down, knowing that the key fact/image/code you need is out of reach until it's back up?

• a clean USB drive – for moving files around.

• coffee mug – you will be supplied with more coffee than may be good for you, and a new cup every time. Be a little kind on your world and bring your own (supersized if necessary) mug. But label, if you want it back again, label.

• water bottle – yes, you've got that unlimited supply of coffee on the go but the brain needs a little more than that – a bottle might encourage you to drink a little bit along the way.

• late night food supplies – don't worry about food – it's good and it's plentiful, except possibly at 11pm when you're about to make that last push for the night – an emergency musli bar stash will never go astray. And a bag of lollies for outright bribery of other teams' members helps.

• stationery set – oh yes, it's a high tech world but sometimes you need to put a piece of paper in front of someone, and you'll need scissors to cut it with and you'll need sticky tape to put it on their wall so they don't forget you. You could ask the endlessly helpful organisers or your could save those minutes for the next task in the impossible list of tasks to complete in your allotted 54 hours.

Well, that's my list of what I wish I'd brought with me, I'd love to hear from other participants on the items they most wished they'd had with them. When enough are mentioned, I'll republish the article with them – as the “perfect suitcase for startup weekends”.

Until then, whatever you do – make sure you take the multi-plug.

 

Ursula Hoult is PR Manager at Unified Inbox in her day job and has just returned from attending her first Startup Weekend. All Startup Weekend Auckland June 15-17 2012 attendees are entitled to receive a free years subscription to Unified Inbox – a place for teams to collaborate on the multiple communication accounts required to run a project or business. Her AKLSW project was Startup-Platform and they use Unified Inbox for managing their incoming communication streams.

 

 

Email is dead, long live email.

The headlines have flown in the last year as to whether our forty year love affair with email is coming to an end. Driving the calls for the end to email were those citing the cost to our lives and productivity. French company ATOS famously announced its plans to ban internal emails by 2014 and German company Volkswagen stopped the delivery of work emails after hours.

But the 29 billion (and increasing) number of real emails sent every day are not going away in a hurry. More than anything businesses today are looking at how policy and technology changes can ensure their businesses are not the ones affected by the $900,000,000 productivity losses the American economy deals with each year.  

Recent research by the Grossman Group has found most believe that banning email in the workplace is the wrong approach to combating email overload, but what would you say if you CEO proposed banning email? This is an area in which many have weighed in with their opinions (interesting polarising views by David Grossman and Daniel Mittleman here), but when legislation is starting to be passed and unions start demanding change, then it is clear a solution is needed.

Policy changes and etiquette for businesses include encouraging workers to pick up the phone, walk across the office or switching to instant messaging to speak to colleagues. But what can be overlooked in these discussions is that email is no longer the only form of communication businesses and their customers are using. Many customers are now more comfortable Tweeting their relative un/happiness with your services. For companies still trying to keep on top of the email torrent, these can seem a next to impossible communication stream to keep on top of.

One of the driving factors behind the development of Unified Inbox was to bring all these communication streams together. There is no ability to intelligently manage their processing without realising the full scale of the communication overload that faces us. This step is one which most providers of communication software are missing, ensuring the business are stuck using the same message silos, as they have in previous years.

Take a look at the infographic below to see what damage overload is doing and how much a solution - a Unified solution - could save you.

Created by: OnlineITDegree.net