AIBU to think this is a normal and acceptable email policy?

[SamSamT]

Hi all,

I was conducting induction for some new starters at work this week; and yesterday we went over some minor policies. One of them being our email policy.

Just for context; we are a medium sized business. Standard office environment with your standard business hours. Since the pandemic we only need to be in the office 2 days a week; but are expected to be available/contactable Mon-Fri during business hours.

Our email policy is basically:

• You can send emails whenever you want. You’re encouraged to use schedule send it outside of business hours but not a problem if you don’t.
• The quickest you can expect someone to read an email you send is by the end of the day. On the flip side you are expected to at least read anything in your inbox before you finish for the day.
• If you need to let someone know something before the end of the day, you need to ring or go see them.
• The quickest you can expect someone to reply to an email is 24hrs (not including weekends). On the flip side, you should always try to reply to emails within 24 hours even if it’s a quick “Got your email, I’ll get the info to you by xxx”
• If you need a reply off someone in less than 24hrs you need to ring them or go see them.
• There is no expectation to read emails out of office hours. Emails sent out for office hours will be considered to have been sent at 8am the following business day for the purposes of read and reply times.

We formalised the policy about 4/5 years ago, as we found expectations varied between managers.

Several of the new starters felt it was a bit invasive they could be receiving emails outside of business hours even if they didn’t have to read them until the end of the next business day. A few of the new starters also thought the expectation to have read all your emails before you sign off was a asking a bit much.

Genuinely interested in your thoughts and to see if we’ve somehow veered off from the corporate norm?

Thanks!

Good grief
It’s incredibly micro managey. I feel stressed just reading that.

The problem with reading all e-mails by the end of the day is that despite what you say about the 24hr response rule, people will always expect more than a ‘I’ll get back to you’ response.
Yes, if it’s urgent, they should ring or speak in person but that doesn’t always happen.

I quite like some of it - the timing of emails for me always feels a bit of a minefield! It’s a bit like working out who you can just pop in on any time and who you need to send an announcement first! I mean friends and family with that one. It spells it out clearly. People are allowed to fire off emails whenever they wish but also sets the expectations for when to expect a reply by. It clarifies to staff that they are only required to deal with these within working hours.

There are also equalities issues to consider. Such a prescriptive policy may well be impossible to manage for many people for reasons related to protected characteristics.

Too complicated and prescriptive. I suppose simply ‘try to reply within 24 hours’ would be more reasonable, but the end of the day thing doesn’t well work at all because you need all these silly additional rules around it to try to prevent people emailing towards the end of the day.

You can't expect people to have read every email before end of day every day. Sending emails outside of business hours is fine as long as staff aren't using personal devices etc. If just work devicea then how would anyone know an email qas sent at 10pm for example until they log on next morning

I’d be a little taken aback at there being such a detailed policy, though I’d appreciate the care taken over ensuring out of hours working is not expected.

I suppose it depends on what the emails signify to your work. Is each email essentially a work request, so in effect “respond to an email in 24 hours” is the same thing as setting a work expectation that all service requests must be acknowledged in a set timeframe? (Reasonable). But if emails are about all sorts of things with all sorts of timeframes, levels of urgency and implications, then it seems odd to expect replies in the same way.

Also agree with what someone said about “must read them all before end day” - if an email arrives 2 mins before I am leaving for the day, and I don’t have time to fully deal with it cos I’m working on something else, I don’t want to open it yet - I’ll leave it till the morning when I have a chance to actually sort it out.

I think it would be more productive to judge the outcomes rather than the method - has someone responded in good time, rather than “has someone opened and read it by the end of the day”.

Email policy to me normally means confirming that it is a work email, they can access it any time and bear that in mind for what you send.

Have never seen an email policy like yours and the timeframes are bizarre. Who wants emails filling up your inbox to say email received? Sounds like you have a manager issue that you are trying to manage with a policy.

Depends a bit on the nature of the business. The requirement to read emails by the end of the day and answer within 24 hours just wouldn't be viable where I work because people are regularly out for various business-related reasons, and when they are out they need to be 100% focussed on what they are doing.

What happens if someone is focussing on something that needs concentration and gets a load of emails at 5pm? Are they supposed to drop what they are doing so as to read the emails, even though they aren't going to act on them?

How far does the replying to emails obligation go? Are people supposed to reply to absolutely every email they receive, even if it's blatantly something that doesn't need a reply?

The actual rules make sense.

But supplying people with the rules as policy is unusual micro-management.

May be useful for first jobbers, who might not have understand general work expectations.

The 24hour thing must slow shit down, I don't read and reply immediately, but I tend to jump on urgent emails within minutes, and leave less urgent ones for...longer.

But I guess I've been working for 25 years, so I've learned how to prioritise effectively.

Maybe you'd be better off:

Educating people on prioritisation.

And

Educating people on how to state urgency in their emails.

This would avoid a blanket approach and allow more autonomy.

As for sending emails out of office hours, I work for a global company with offices in 36 countries. I expect out of hours emails.

Many of us have a line in our emails which reads: I've sent this email at a time convenient to me, in my time zone, I have no expectation of a response outside of your working hours.

I have spent thirty years working in corporates / multinationals on three different continents. We didn’t have email the first few years (😀), but otherwise, no I have never seen anything as ridiculous as this.

Truthfully I have never seen any email policy at all that covers such things as to when you need to read and respond to email by. It has always been taken as a given that people will answer on a timely basis and of course some don’t, in which case a follow up email or call is going to follow. I would also have thought it patently obvious that you ring not email if the matter is urgent.

Honestly OP, this is micromanaging on a new level.

It seems fair to me, this is usually how mine works. Obviously depends on the volume of incoming emails and if they have meetings, visits or whatever the business is.

Totally bonkers. Micromanagement at its finest. I worked for a boss like this once. Not for long!!!

It really needs simplifying. It's very prescriptive which doesn't feel very professional.

Our policy is that we respond to emails within two working days and we have a disclaimer on our emails that says ' this email was sent at a time convenient to the sender. There is no need to respond outside of business hours'

Don’t most email accounts allow you to mark it back as unread?
Or have a flag system?
I’d find that a really poor reason not to follow this policy.

This! This is how I operate and I would fear having to read all emails before leaving would mean I may miss important actions I'd need to take off the back of them

It all seems fairly common sense as ‘guidance’ as another PP suggests - but as ‘policy’ this would concern me as a new starter. It would flag to me this is somewhere that micro-manages and/or has lots of people that don’t understand boundaries to the degree you’ve had to put this detailed policy in place.

And surely the volume of emails/expected reply time for each individual will vary depending on the department, role and nature of request.

I think it’s bonkers and could cause to missed emails/work for anyone who does an ‘unread emails mean I need to action it’ system - like myself

Just mark them as unread 🤷🏼‍♀️

Agree with the PPs who have said this sounds very prescriptive. If I was a new starter and read this as a policy my heart would sink and I'd begin to think I'd made a huge mistake in not accurately judging the culture of the company during the recruitment process. Particularly the part about reading all emails before the end of the day. That sounds designed to cause stress and anxiety for those whose time pressed part of their home life is after work.

For context, I work quite flexibly and send, receive, read and sometimes action emails outside of business hours because I'm in a senior position in a global organisation. I don't do it when not necessary and not do I expect colleagues to.

It’s reasonable and sensible. Nobody wants to do any work these days. Our culture is unrecognisable from less than even 100 years ago. When my parents were working in the 50s/60s, letters had to be dealt with and replied to on the day they were received. Completely standard. And a new starter would have been grateful for the job and done exactly as told - no whinging about completely reasonable policies.

Most of our services are slow functioning or non functioning. This attitude is why.

Ridiculous level of micro managing and shows lack of trust in your employees. Not good traits I would want to see in my employer so not surprised your new joiners questioned it

Good to have SLAs and norms of when people should expect replies but not as perspective as what has been written here

I can see it is a bit overkill but having worked for a line manager who could take days/weeks to get back to me this would have been brilliant & saved so much time & hassle.

We frequently survey employees on what they want. It always comes back:

• we want flexibility in our hours, including when we work and send emails


• we don’t want to deal with emails outside of working hours

So it works best for us that you can send whenever you want, but you can’t expect others to reply at that time.

As a line manager, I don’t want scheduled sending. I don’t want the email at 09:00. I want to see that it was sent at 22:00 so I can check it on my team, make sure all is OK. Sometimes that leads to a lovely quick chat about a child’s sports day the day before, sometimes it leads to finding out that the person is finding a task much more involved than they thought and needs support.

Yeah this is bonkers.
Mainly because the amount of emails people get varies wildly, i used to get between 100-200 a day at one point, and not all of those were requests to me directly but stuff i needed to be aware of.
I dont think the principles themselves are actually that bonkers (other than the having to reply to say you've seen it which... wow)
But the timescales are incredibly short - people have meetings and actual work to do, what does it matter if i read an email by 5pm when i could just as easily read it at 10am the next day? It depends on your industry i guess. If you are overstaffed in something relaxed those timescales would still be a bit short. But in anything under resourced, no way.
Our general rule was 'if its in an email, its not urgent. If its urgent, call/IM' and even IMs didnt mean you get an instant reply.
Interesting to hear how different places tackle it!

I have always been very much on top of my emails and working in multinationals I am used to getting emails all times of the day or night and it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. But I have to say if I started somewhere and came across a policy like this, I don’t think I would like to work there. It would be a huge warning flag about culture (no trust in employees, being treated like children).