E-mail Revisited

The effectiveness and prominence of e-mail has increased over years. But it
is also true that e-mails are being misused to a great extent. Such issues can
be effectively addressed by following some basic rules.

Though e-mail is a life-saver for everyone from the complexities of the
correspondence system, it is largely misused. Here is an eye opener to the
employer as well as the employee on important issues in the world of mails!

The importance of e-mail and how to utilize it effectively has been dealt
with in the past. It’s time now to revisit the subject of e-mail and see how
it is being used or misused, and what are the new issues that have become
important today.

In an earlier article in these columns we had compiled some basic rules to
follow when using e-mail for business communications. The effectiveness and
prominence of e-mail has changed and increased over the years, making it almost
a mandatory tool for business communications. Increasing availability and usage
of e-mail has raised many new issues that need to be addressed.

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basic rules still apply in the present condition and have become even more
important. In addition, there are new rules that are applicable. In the present
context, all the rules are equally important.

Group reading?

Don’t send CCs and BCCs to people who really don’t need to know what A
is telling B. Don’t flood them with unwanted e-mail messages. It is very
necessary that the CC, BCC, ‘Reply’ and ‘Reply All’ features be used
with discretion.

E-mail communication channels are being constantly fed by the
ever-increasing amount of information, resulting in what is now known as Data
Smog. This information overload can develop into a serious problem, more so if
we don’t differentiate between useful and useless information. So don’t add
up to this problem by sending unnecessary CCs, BCCs and ‘Reply All’ mails.

Watch your step!

The recipients of these unwanted mails, ie CCs, BCCs must also be careful in
filtering out important and unimportant mails. Extra-smart subordinates can
bombard you with them. If something goes wrong down the line they can always
point out that they had kept you informed about what was happening.

Some people have developed a habit of marking all their mails
with the "Highest Priority" flag! If every mail from a subordinate is
addressed this way, it’s time for you to take up the issue and make him
understand that this should be used only when the mail is really very important
and urgent.

Personal mail?

Remember that people at the top do not always read their own e-mail.
Increasing volumes of business e-mails being exchanged have made this rule very
important. More and more busy executives are delegating the e-mail accounts to
their secretaries.

If you know that the secretary will access the mails, then
keep the content strictly to business communication. Any confidential or
sensitive matter must be discussed over the phone or through any other e-mail
ID, which will be accessed only by the recipient himself or herself.

I see, you see, we all see!

Another issue that has now become very important is the monitoring of e-mail
traffic on the company LAN. As more and more employees get access to e-mail in
the office, they use the mail also for their personal communications. This may
include exchange of heavy image files, screensavers, Power Point shows and even
freeware

programs.

As the e-mail traffic grows in numbers and size, the network
administrators get worried about their mail-servers and may start monitoring
your mails. In such cases you are running a very high risk if you continue to
use the office e-mail for personal communications.

Another risk involved here is when any of your e-mails come
to the server with a wrongly spelt username, they land into a mailbox called
Postmaster mailbox. The administrator can read such mails without your
knowledge.

This can also happen when you give your e-mail password to
someone else as a matter of convenience. Even though the person may be very
trustworthy, human beings being very curious by nature, it results in that
person snooping into your mails.

The mail that he or she has read can be marked again as
unread in many e-mail programs and you will never know if someone else has read
that mail. If such a thing happens you only have yourself to blame and can say
with utter frustration, "How could he (or she) do this to me?"

State precise subject

E-mails from unknown people with vague subjects are mostly deleted. With the
increasing "Data Smog" on the information highway, attention must be
given to the "Subject" line. It should be very precise for the
recipient to understand what it’s all about.

Never use single words like Hi, Urgent, Important etc in the
subject line. They don’t help in any way to understand what is written in that
e-mail. The worst thing to do to your "Subject" line is to keep it
blank. Chances are, your mails will quickly get deleted.

Other mandatory rules

Make it a point to save the important e-mail addresses in the address book.
E-mail addresses tend to change fairly frequently. Help yourself by keeping a
track of these changes and avoid bouncing back of e-mails. Read Receipt is
another useful feature offered by some e-mail systems. Use it only when
essential.

Never send a file attachment when a simple text message would
do. It takes time to download attachments, and by sending unnecessary
attachments, you are wasting someone else’s time and money.

With the proliferation of e-mail viruses, this rule becomes
very important. Some e-mail systems automatically delete virus-infected
attachments and your important document may never reach the recipient in such a
case.

Like the content, the response time is also very important
for business e-mail. You must respond to e-mail within at least 12 hours, so
that the sender has a reply in his mailbox latest by the next working day.

If you feel that the e-mail is urgent and/or important, reply
immediately and take necessary action. In other cases, try any of these short
replies whichever is the most appropriate.

Thank you.

I know!

Yes you are right.

Will do as you say.

OK.

Will reply in two days.

I don’t know, but will try to find out.

Call me.

I will call you.

Sorry.

Nothing to reply because you didn’t ask any questions!

Not on this e-mail ID, stupid, use my Hotmail ID!

Not replying to the mail can mean that the mail has not
reached you and got lost in cyberspace or you decided not to reply for some
reason. Avoid such vague conditions.

Ashok Dongre