The cost of email interruption

The use of email by employees at the Danwood Group was studied and it was found that the interrupt effect from emails is more than generally believed. Employees allowed themselves to be interrupted almost as frequently as telephone calls and the common reaction to the arrival of an email is to react almost as quickly as they would respond to telephone calls. This means the interrupt effect is comparable with that of a telephone call. The recovery time from an email interruption was found to be significantly less than the published recovery time for telephone calls. It is to be concluded, therefore, that while Email is still less disruptive than the telephone, the way the majority of users handle their incoming email has been shown to give far more interruption than expected. By analysing the data captured the authors have been able to create recommendations for a set of guidelines for email usage within the workplace that will increase employee efficiency by reducing the prominence of interruptions, restricting the use of email-to-all messages, setting-up the email application to display three lines of the email and to check for email less frequently. It is recommended that training should be given to staff on how to use email more effectively to increase employee productivity. This paper resulted from a study of the communication methods within an organisation that retails office solutions: The Danwood Group. This study is part of a wider research programme to identify the costs and benefits of the IT within the company. The investigation of the benefits of email relative to traditional communication methods forms a study within the company to establish the value of such analysis. The use of IT for communication was chosen for the initial study as the organisation has rising communication overheads with the consequential reduction of employee productivity within all functions. The company expects that a basic understanding gained from this study will provide the data for communication planning and corrective actions for the problems uncovered. Through communicating we exchange our thoughts, ideas, opinions, feelings with other people, at work, and in every other part of our life. The communication process is so commonplace that it becomes second nature, though by analysing the process it is seen to be much more complex, and much less efficient, than it is normally assumed. By understanding the communication process we can select the optimum communication medium to increase the efficiency of our communication, with benefit to the productiveness of our work. As communication pervades nearly everything we do, even small improvements in the effectiveness and cost of our communication processes can have significant benefits. It is in the interests of management to ensure that the communication process is performed effectively and efficiently and with the minimum disruption to other work.