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 lord. Everyone I know just deals with email as and when they can. I couldn’t even be arsed to read through that extensive list, I think people will think it’s nuts! I mean, are you going to haul someone over the calls for breach of clause 17 of the email policy?

Ridiculous policy. Sounds like it was written to regulate behaviour rather than tackle the individual or individuals who were not performing.

you are creating unreasonable pressure on junior employees if seniors send emails to them outside of working hours

Why? They're not expected to look at them or respond to them until the next working day. The policy makes that clear.

It's been a while since I worked in an office, but surely people should be trusted to reply within a reasonable time frame dependent on the email, and not be expected to look at emails outside of working hours- simple as that. Emails are never a good way to get information quickly, if we ever needed anything we'd phone and then send the documents via email, or put a please reply by x date (as long as it was reasonable). But everything within 24 hours eurgh, probably takes more time to manage your inbox then actually do any work.

It is about workplace culture.

The UK has much worse workplace culture than many European countries, although not as grim as the US of course.

When a senior sends and email to a junior at e.g. 8pm, they are saying 'in this workplace senior staff work late'. They set the tone and the cultural expectations.

This is well known - culture is set by organisational leaders.

I get work emails out of hours but I’m not expected to read them until I’m at work and they don’t go to my personal phone so I don’t get any notifications and it makes zero difference to me. I guess it depends on the set-up really.

The rest of your email policy is so weirdly rigid, however, that I actually laughed out loud when I read it. I’ve been working in offices for nearly 25 years and literally never have I read anything like that. I’ve only ever worked in places where it’s assumed that people are capable of a) knowing when to make a phone call if something’s urgent or b) prioritising their work. Like, you know, actual adults. I’m sure customer service have a KPI for average response times to customer enquiries, but normal emails between colleagues?! No.

Sorry - another vote for this being very micro-managery and I'm horribly OCD about emails - always reply immediately and never have more than around 20 in my main inbox that need actioning - if it creeps above that I get properly stressed..! But I recognise this is my style, not everyone's and there's no way I'd set that many rules that are that prescriptive! If I need someone to do something urgently I'll mark it as urgent in the subject - mostly we don't do this, so when we do flag something as urgent, or put a deadline in the subject matter, that's enough to get it sorted.

Really hacks me off when people whinge about emails sent outside of hours. If no expectation they answer them then what is the problem? All adults, their problem not mine if they log on outside of hours and then complain about emails.

Fuck that. I wouldn't work for a company that specified when I had to read emails.

Has something changed in the last couple of years? I have spent 30 years in multinationals but not the last couple of years admittedly.

Anyway junior employees go home and don’t see their email again until the following day as they are not typically furnished with company mobile phones. Yes they would have access to log in at home, but just for working from home days, not for checking email in the evenings.

Eurgh yes I hate this. My last job before retraining was full of seniors like this. They chose to work late and were forever mentioning it, I said oh I work my hours as I have caring responsibilities and if that impinges on my ability to progress then it's not the place for me and I left. But yes it does have an air of what you say.

That's mad. Have a 2 working day policy for replying to and reading emails. Anything more urgent should be a phone call during working hours. Keep it simple.

Of course it bonkers.

That literally allows management to send important e,ails 1 minute before the close of day and employees to remain outside of work hours to respond - even if to say they'll action the following day.

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

This is a bit ridiculous of them. Just don't log in and then they won't even know they've been sent it? A senior manager at my company likes to email me at 2am. Makes no difference to me, I'm not reading it until 9 either way (and to be fair, she doesn't expect me to). And at least with your policy, it's spelled out to anyone who does send an email outside of hours that they cannot expect a response.

The alternative would be banning emailing outside of business hours, which (depending on the nature of the business) just wouldn't work. Sometimes you need to work late, sometimes that might involve sending an email at 6pm. As long as you don't expect a reply, what difference does it make. It would be annoying to have to add that email to your list of stuff to do the next day, if it makes sense to do it at the time.

Increasingly young people will not tolerate the bullying us older people put up with in work. In Europe it is increasingly unacceptable (and in some places illegal) to email people when on holiday or not at work.

The UK is a tough place, it is a suck it up buttercup kind of place - where people have to robustly enforce their boundaries. Times are changing and younger people are more likely to expect people respect their boundaries in the first place.

I'm an old fucker but was just ahead of my time with boundaries I think

The broad expectations seem reasonable but there doesn’t need to be such a prescriptive policy, I’ve worked at several large international companies and have never seen anything like it.

I work with global teams so a lot of the time I’m either sending emails to people outside of their working hours or I’m receiving them outside of mine. There’s no expectation to deal with them outside of working hours.

I don’t understand people getting annoyed about receiving them out of hours, why are you even looking at them out of hours if that’s the case?

It's hard to say without knowing more info. For example I generally try and keep up with my inbox. But sometimes I have back to back meetings all afternoon and they over run. Should someone be expected to stay after their working hours to read all their emails?

What if someone is asking someone for a long response that requires a lot of work? Eg can I have your comments on the legalities of this 100 page contract? 24 hours is probably a bit quick to respond. But an email scheduling in dates for something I'd expect an instant response pretty much

I work in a large corporate organisation and there is nothing like this. Our policy is try and talk to people and back it up in writing if necessary, don't use your email for personal things, and more about content eg never say anything in email you wouldn't want read out in a room of your managers, make sure your auto signature is up to date, and try and speak in plain English where possible (corporate comms for consistency type thing) but there is no real monitoring as we are professionals and trusted to manage our own inboxes and it is spotted by others if someone isnt achieving this

Reading all your emails - it's not just reading though is it , it's understanding and digesting the information and taking action if required..so making sure you've read it by 5pm doesn't mean jack if you haven't also got the time to do the rest. I'd rather leave it as unread/flagged then give it my full attention when I have time and my manager does the same too. Depends on the volume of emails here too. I've never known such a policy.

But many people aren't 'capable of making a phone call if it's urgent' because that's how a lot of these dozens/hundreds of emails people are receiving daily are generated.

If the people who worked for companies that have this sort of email culture thought about it, they'd realise that many of these emails aren't necessary or the most efficient way to do things.

If you don't need a reply, you can schedule send.

Why do seniors not want to schedule send?

Power/pressure is the answer but of course they won't say that. A senior knows that when a junior gets in at 9am to an email sent at 9pm the night before, they had better get on it as that person was a) working late and b) has already been waiting 12 hours.

Workplace culture in the UK is pretty toxic. Loads of people put up with it as they are used to it.

Yes exactly. I have very complex work that has fixed deadlines, if I had to read all my bloody emails in the middle of drawing upa statement I think it would affect my accuracy/focus.

You should not know if an email has come in overnight. You should be logged out, have work devices switched off and have work notifications switched off on personal devices.
log in next morning and deal with anything that arrived while you were away from your desk. It’s basic work discipline.

Way too prescriptive and rigid. But why on earth is it intrusive to receive emails outside of office hours? How would anyone know that they’re getting an email from work at 10pm? They won’t know until they log on to work the next morning.

Needing to read an email by end of day is ridiculous. Important emails at the company I work for are often sent at 5pm or 6pm. You action them the next day or whenever. There’s no urgency, unless the email is marked important- but even then, you act on it when next at work.

Having to reply to an email in such prescriptive terms is also ridiculous- many emails don’t need a reply: they are just instructions on a new process or other sort of info.

I thought that from a wellbeing perspective it's best to limit sending emails outside working hours. Eg you should write them and set it to delated send til the morning if you're working late

You can tell people there is no need to respond or work late but if you see emails regularly from your boss or colleagues outside working hours, it does get perceived that that's the culture and it can be seen as implicit that people 'should' work outside their hours even if it's not the written policy. There is the written policy but if things are regularly happening outside the written policy (eg your boss emailing you in the evening) it becomes accepted practice. If my colleagues get emailed by their boss in the evening they will try and respond that evening as they reason it must be urgent. Something to be aware of. My company previously tried to stop emails outside working hours but it got sidelined by covid and everyone working weird hours

Hi all,

I’ve not read the full thread as I’m at work;

just wanted to say we don’t have very many meetings at my place (often just the weekly briefing). Most of our work day is infront of a PC.

Ive checked my inbox quickly (I probably receive more emails than most) and yesterday I received 61 emails