In work, what's the reasonable amount of time to expect an email reply?

[Sparks46th]

I'm just fishing for a general consensus. One of the difficulties of covid is everyone is working from home, including all the partner and client organizations.

I work for the client, and we have consultants working for us. I find I am regularly sending emails along the lines of "when can we expect the report?", "Are you available for a project meeting?"

Assuming you don't get an out of office reply, what's the consensus view on how long you should wait for a reply before you send a reminder?

I don't want to be a dick, but I find some consultants very slow to respond, and weeks fly by in these communications.

I think you are approaching this from the wrong angle.
Depending on what was agreed, assuming there was an agreement, the report mail should be more along the lines of "can you confirm delivery on your report on....?" They will be back to you promptly enough if there is a deadline.
Regarding meeting arrangements, surely project meetings are arranged on a regular basis, so set day and time? If not, why not instigate a regular meeting? Again, you will soon hear if the day or time doesn't suit and you can rearrange accordingly.
Most people will ignore general enquiries, you need to pin them down with specifics.

*of your report

Depends how busy the person is but I usually respond to anything which only requires a quick reply the same day, or the day after if I've been in meetings all day. Leave it weeks and the person you're emailing has likely forgotten and won't ever reply.

Well I sometimes get up to 300 emails a day. Once I weed out the nonsense then I take usually 1-2 days to respond.

It depends. If I have sent something out for review I will say please get back to me by X date. If no reply by then I'll send a chaser the next morning. Then weekly/phone them.

If it's just a quick email and it's been a couple of days I'd just phone them or send an IM.

Email is asynchronous communication. You send at your leisure, they reply at theirs - unless you give them a clear deadline that you need the information by.

I have a very different attitude to my staff on this - they work in our customer support, and display great anxiety if unable to supply answers immediately.

I'm higher up the food chain, and if they run a non-urgent question by me that needs a little thought, it just goes in the queue, like anything else that I'm responsible for.

Nudging people if you failed to give a clear deadline is PITA behaviour.

I usually respond same day or the next day. If I'm waiting on something before I send an email back, I email to let them know I'm waiting on xyz and will send it across once I have it.

If I don't receive a reply from someone, I normally chase it up a week later. If they don't respond again, I pick up the phone.

I hate having to chase people.

@Sparks46th

I'm just fishing for a general consensus. One of the difficulties of covid is everyone is working from home, including all the partner and client organizations.

I work for the client, and we have consultants working for us. I find I am regularly sending emails along the lines of "when can we expect the report?", "Are you available for a project meeting?"

Assuming you don't get an out of office reply, what's the consensus view on how long you should wait for a reply before you send a reminder?

I don't want to be a dick, but I find some consultants very slow to respond, and weeks fly by in these communications.

I'm a consultant (I hope you're not my client, if so, I'm sorry). I generally would like to respond to emails especially from clients within the hour unless I'm out of the office or in a meeting. If so can, I'll send a quick holding reply until I can reply properly. However, I'm also not the boss and senior people I've found tend to be a bit more rubbish at reading/responding to stuff and sometimes I can't respond as I'm waiting on something from my boss (his timeline or availability perhaps). It really frustrates me because I hate not replying ASAP.

I’d expect a consultant to reply within a day or two.
Can you turn it around to be ‘meeting on whatever date, let me know if that doesn’t suit’?

I tend to do same day, even if just a: let me check and get back to you.

Otherwise not only do I have double the amount of emails the following day, plus extra emails to chase the ones that I haven't replied to.

More than 2 days is rude and unprofessional.

If it is not urgent, I wouldn't wait for more than 3 days, than make phone calls.

Email is asynchronous communication. You send at your leisure, they reply at theirs

yes, but that's about the time you sent and reply, not the amount of time you leave between replying.

It means you can email at 5am or 11pm, and you don't expect reply out of office hours, not that it's acceptable to ignore and not reply for days on end.

I work with a guy who, after say 2 weeks annual leave, returns to work and promptly deletes every single unread email sitting in his inbox. His theory is "if its important, they'll email again".

Blew. My. Mind.

Generally for me if they’re a client, I’d respond within a few hours. Internal emails usually that day or the next if it’s late afternoon.

However, I agree on setting deadlines. I am an extremely organised person and if someone asks me to do something, it will always be done. I’ve learnt that other people do not take the same approach and often have to be nudged along. Now I always say “I need this completed in time for the meeting on X date” and then will check in a few days later to make sure they’re working on it.

I sympathise, it’s utterly tedious having to check up on grown ups who should be doing their job but it is what it is

@thecatsthecats

Email is asynchronous communication. You send at your leisure, they reply at theirs - unless you give them a clear deadline that you need the information by.

I have a very different attitude to my staff on this - they work in our customer support, and display great anxiety if unable to supply answers immediately.

I'm higher up the food chain, and if they run a non-urgent question by me that needs a little thought, it just goes in the queue, like anything else that I'm responsible for.

Nudging people if you failed to give a clear deadline is PITA behaviour.

This is absolutely the worst type of manager to have. The staff are customer facing so taking all the incoming flack hence the anxiety and the manager is pootling along along at their own speed seemingly oblivious to the impact that their delays will be having on others. Really poor management no matter how ‘high up the food chain’ you think you are. A good manager should support their staff to give great performance not be an obstacle they have to work around.

@redheadwitch

I work with a guy who, after say 2 weeks annual leave, returns to work and promptly deletes every single unread email sitting in his inbox. His theory is "if its important, they'll email again".

Blew. My. Mind.

He's got a point

If I did that, I would lose clients who would go elsewhere, but he's proving a point.

I am sure he's not the only one, how many times does someone deny knowing something even when you specifically emailed them - even when they were standing right in front of you.

I would approach this specific problem differently. Reports/other outputs should have clear deadlines when they are commissioned. Turnaround times for ad hoc requests should be written into the SLA.

I also think meetings/calls are better than email. I will send a text to say "do you have time for a quick call" and then follow up the call with an email documenting the agreed actions and deadlines if I think it's warranted.

@VictoriaLudorum, point taken, I could work to make communication more clear and deadline driven. At the same time, sometimes there is a need to check in with a general query.

Well, my staff are pretty understanding of my needs and priorities, and they're pretty happy with my management (they have directly told me how much better life is under my direction than others and how much they appreciate what I do and my ability to prioritise matters of importance to the business).

So I'm afraid I'll disregard your performance review :D

And I didn't say that I pootle, especially on urgent things. They tend to treat non urgent queries with the SAME urgency as urgent ones. E.g. Customer needs immediate support with issue is treated with the same urgency as customer asking a general query about a product we're releasing next year. I can answer the first immediately, but the seceis not a cause for legitimate anxiety.

I feel very strongly about this, because the success of our organisation is predicated on everyone being treated as worthy of respect and consideration. That includes me, and I'm not going to sweat myself to nothing dealing with things that aren't urgent. Our CEO is an ex union leader - he's very hot on employee welfare, which includes training them not to froth about non urgent things.

As a pp said I'd change the way you're asking things.

So for example "Can I expect the report by xx?"
For the meeting just set the date yourself and send meeting request. If it's not suitable they'll respond.

As a pp said I'd change the way you're asking things.
So for example "Can I expect the report by xx?"
For the meeting just set the date yourself and send meeting request. If it's not suitable they'll respond.

Point taken here, I think I do need to approach this more actively. I am after all the client here.

I have a strict rule where I reply to everything in my inbox (anything that needs a response, obviously not to junk/spam/reminders about the work kitchen etc) within 1 working day (annual leave etc excepting when I have an OOO on) - not always giving the person the answer or the work they wanted but acknowledging receipt and telling them how long it will take if I don't have it there and then. I expect the same from my team - it's just simple politeness IMO (and no, I don't think a pass-agg auto-reply saying 'I'm very busy don't expect me to respond to you' is the same thing at all despite what some of my colleagues think .

I don't care how many emails you get a day, it take 30 secs to bash out a 'This will take me a week or so, let me get back to you' type response to anyone waiting (you can even copy and paste it to multiple recipients if you like). It drives me mad when people think they're too important or 'senior' to do this. As a PP said junior or customer facing staff in particular may have pressure on them from all directions so leaving them to simply guess how long it'll take for the recipient to even acknowledge the existence of their question/problem is unacceptable really - I'd say that's even less cool than leaving a customer or your boss hanging, at least the latter knows they have some leverage over you ultimately whereas the poor junior staff just have to wait or chase you in a forelock tugging 'oh please mighty manager might you dain to consider my request' type way which isn't nice at all.

I usually try to respond within 24 hours, but less important ones I save until Friday afternoon, when I catch up on any emails I have not answered during the week. However, I've just finished some work with/for colleagues, which was rather time pressured, and hated that people expected almost instantaneous responses to their emails. Sure, I understand that sometimes there is no choice, but here it was simply a case of bad planning: they had been given a month to complete a project, but didn't start until there was only a week left.

Appreciate this might vary from sector to sector/role to role, but the best managers/colleagues I have had hardly ever required an instant response, simply because they had planned well enough ahead & managed to organise people effectively, so that people knew their roles, deadlines, etc.

I went on an email communication course at a work place once. Most of these generic work place courses are shit but this one was excellent and really changed the way I communicate by email to get the results I want.
One of the main points was that email shouldn't be used for anything urgent, you should always pick up the phone for that then follow up with an email to confirm what was agreed on the phone.

If you need an immediate response then you should be calling not emailing. People who are busy can get 200+ emails a day & be in and out of meetings so it can take a while to keep clearing them. A phone call is much better for a 2 second relatively time sensitive question.

I tend to reply within two days but occasionally things slip through (am a consultant). It also depends on the overall volume of work with the client. If I only do a day per month for them, its not feasible to reply to everything immediately.

It also depends on their own turnaround. Some clients promise everything by a certain date, then email it three days late and expect me to still turn it around in 24 hours - which isn't fair if I have set the time aside for them the previous week.

Most of my clients are relatively long term though so if I miss an email they'd pick up the phone if it was urgent.