Email etiquette

[Homedeco]

I have been promoted to a manager at work but have had next to no training.

My experience with the other managers I work alongside are that they are not a people person eg regularly ignore emails and messages sent to them. But ultimately they get results.

I was wondering, is filtering out messages like this something I should learn to do? Just say as an example that I manage nurses, I know how to be a good nurse as I was a nurse - but I’m not trying to look at things from a nurse perspective but from a management perspective with conflicting priorities and scant resources. And I can’t pick up every piece of work, some things may need to be directed elsewhere etc?

Is there an appropriate time to ignore a message vs responding? Or is it always rude?

Oh dear…. Managers don’t set out to ignore emails, they typically just can’t get to them all.

Managers also shouldn’t be replying to every email, especially those they are only CC’d on.

so yes, you will need to learn how to delegate and prioritize as a manager.

@saltinesandcoffeecups maybe my office is a bit more ruthless?

One situation recently involved 3 managers. Manager 1 sent an email to the others saying their deputy would take charge of Task A whilst they were on AL. Task A is manager 2’s sole responsibility, and they had already delegated that work, so were confused by this email.

They asked manager 3 for advice, and the advice was to simply ignore it. Manager 1 came back from AL fuming as their email was ignored and their deputy wasn’t involved with the task, but ultimately their ask was outside their remit as it wasn’t their lead area.

that’s more the situation I was referring to vs emails received from my members of staff.

It’s navigating office politics I think I need help with.

in the above situation I probably would have sent a “thanks for your email…..however” kind of thing explaining my decision. But honestly ignoring the email worked just as well and was less effort.

I guess some of this may vary depending on what industry you’re in. I used to manage people and would always reply to emails sent directly to me. I’ve since changed careers and feel a bit put out if managers don’t respond to emails where I actually need a response from them.

If a manager was off, I would just hope for a response from anybody that could help (our policy is a generic email to all managers). If they all ignored me then I wouldn’t be happy tbh. Even if their response was to say that they weren’t sure and I should contact XYZ that would be better than being ignored when I clearly needed an answer to something I didn’t know.

Totally bizarre of manager 1 on your example.

im a manager in the NHS too and as PP said above, I don’t set out to ignore emails but I get on average 200 a day, 180 of which I HAVE to read, 100 require urgent replies and the rest are a mix of FYIs and not urgent will reply when I can. Between email traffic, 4 bed meetings and other meetings, no way I can reply to everything. You learn to prioritise/red flag things you don’t want lost in the abyss of the inbox.

however to your specific example, if I was manager 2 or 3 I’d have ignored it too as it’s stepping on other peoples responsibility area. Manager 1 would probably have found it rude had the others replied “thanks but we won’t be supporting deputy to do task A because it’s neither of your remit” anyway, not replying to the email and just having a casual “oh but why would deputy do x when that’s my job” with shrug face to face when asked on return would suffice. ….and then knowing NHS politics, someone would go to more senior management resulting in more work having to ensure our roles and responsibilities are properly defined and written down even though we all know what they are.

the NHS doesn’t train managers well, and certainly not if you’ve crossed over from clinical to a role in band 7/8 etc. but I would suggest looking at the NHS leadership course - the Edward Jenner programme is for first time managers and is free, you just have to get your manager to sign you off as being supported to do it. You could then look at doing the Mary Seacole etc which costs but your manager should support. Both very good. I’d also sign up to any in house HR courses for managing sickness/absence, managing disciplinarys etc, any governance in house training for how to respond and investigate incidents (on datix or Ulysses or similar), and managing risk registers etc. basically take all the in house training you can get, and be clear with your manager where your development needs are in your 1:1s and PDRs and agree with them support/opportunities to develop in those areas.

hope that helps and isn’t too preachy!

In this case, manager 2 should have asked their own line manager why manager 1 was involved delegating work/responsibility for project A when they had been under the impression it was their responsibility.

Regarding emails- no hard and fast rule. We have some with "sight seen" tick boxes for example. You get to know which ones need a reply or not. Inboxes can get clogged with people committing everything to an email to leave a paper trail sometimes.