To think everyone who uses email in their work should learn how to manage it effectively?

[FireworksAndSparklers]

I'm so tired of colleagues and managers never replying to emails until days (sometimes weeks) later, usually with the excuse that they have hundreds of unread emails backed up.

I just think there's no need for it. Find a strategy that works for you and do it. Don't just let your emails back up without dealing with them. It's rude and it's counter-productive for both your own efficiency and that of the people you work with.

I know my own strategy wouldn't work for everyone, but I would never just ignore an important part of my work because I haven't taken the time to figure out a system for managing it.

AIBU or is it ok to just let your emails build up and up and leave correspondents hanging for ever for responses?

Maybe they're busier than you?

I am with you OP. I do the exact same role as several other people. A couple of them are always so busy with emails according to them and so don’t reply for weeks/months. The rest of us reply within 24/48 hours.

At least they give you an excuse. I have all sorts of colleagues who take many weeks to reply. completely normal, no explanations why.

Not a problem I’ve encountered but if someone sends me something wordy it will go to the bottom of the list.

What type of things are you emailing? What’s the length of your email?

"Find a strategy that works for you and do it."

People do. And clearly have with yours. If they're taking weeks to reply, how important was your email in the first place?
I reply to ones that need replying to.
I have more of an issue with people emailing me when there's no need, or when they could come and ask me. Or send me a message.

It does depend how many emails you get and how busy you are! I find it hard to manage my inbox because I just get 100s of emails a day. I tell people to message or call me if they need something urgent.

Nope. Either less busy or the same. And even if you are super busy, not being able to manage your emails means you're not actually capable of doing a large portion of your work so why are you in the role?

I am a crazy busy person and have lots of roles and elements to my work that need constant juggling. But I have a good system that works and when I find bits of my work that aren't being managed well, I figure out a system to be able to manage it effectively.

Tell people to stop sending them to me then

How do you manage the 100s of emails a day scenario OP?

I despair sometimes.
25 years ago we got taught email etiquette at work.
Subject headings that were succinct and to the point about what was needed (FYI or query/info needed or agreement)
Strict 1 subject per email rule
I rolled my eyes at the time when sent on that course but it's still needed

Oh this isn't just replies to my emails, this is long standing issues with communication with these people across the board. Including complaints from clients and the people themselves loving the drama of bewailing how full their email inbox is in meetings etc. I just want to say to them 'work out a bloody system, for crying out loud!'.

Hmmm, it depends.

When I was working I spent at least 1/3 of my time chasing people up for a response even though their actual job that they were getting paid to do was to give me that information.

It's not rude to not respond to an email quickly - some people take a few days or weeks to respond. I don't see the problem with that.

HOWEVER, if you need them to respond in order for you to move forward with your work, and it's their job to give you this information and they're not doing the job they're paid for then yes, thats disgraceful.

See this is why I went self employed.

If this keeps happening to you, it might be a you problem.

I get hundreds of emails in a day. I reply to the ones that are important to me. I ignore or filter out the ones that aren’t..

Tell them your system.

I'm talking here about people who ignore important emails and profess to not even glancing at them. There is no system. No triage, no 'deal with the quick wins' as they come in, no nothing. Just let them all pile up and never look at them until you have a whole day to work on them.

For many people emails are a tiny part of their role, not their priority. In a previous role I’d sometimes get over 200 emails a day whilst I was teaching / in meetings back to back for 8 hours. What system would you have used for that?

I agree. There are people who can’t seem to put an email management system in place. I think it’s a training thing. If you are getting 100s of emails a day, you need rules set up to manage them ect..

I think it depends on how busy you are and how high a priority it is in your role to answer emails quickly. Right now I can do my actual job or I can put that to one side and spend all my time composing uninformative updates to people who are asking me unanswerable questions so they can show their bosses they're "on it". In the past it's been my job to answer stupid questions promptly from people who are busier than me, but not any more thank god.

I'm very interested to hear what your system is misses point of thread entirely

What’s your system? I’m always looking for a better one

Does you workplace have Teams or Slack because it could be you're just clinging to email and everyone else is messaging. If I want something done quickly I would never use email now. I always message by via teams unless it is a message requiring several people to be cc'd.

Right now I can do my actual job or I can put that to one side and spend all my time composing uninformative updates to people who are asking me unanswerable questions so they can show their bosses they're "on it".

This captures it really

My own strategy is quick wins get dealt with as soon as they come in if I'm at my laptop and not in a meeting, or as soon as possible afterwards.

Non-urgent get put in a folder for me to come back to as soon I have a little more time (and have a deadline attached to them so they don't get forgotten about).

Urgent but not quick wins have a bit of time created for them the same as I would deal with in-person firefighting issues.

What are you emailing them about? Plenty of people basically only answer that day's emails. If it's really important, you'd message via Teams or ring. Your emails don't sound like they are that important to the people you're sending them to.

I think many of the people the OP refers to would be slow in responding to any form of communication, unless you were stood almost in front of them.

Just as some people are never on time, even though they could be if they wanted to.