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?

Yes, this!!!

It's not even really about the emails I don't get a response to. It's more that it's a symptom of some severely unproductive working...or of people loving the drama of business. It's a bloody toxic culture and totally unnecessary.

OP I think you must have a generous amount of capacity to respond so quickly.

I have days when I don't have time for quick wins. I have to skim read/triage to check if anything needs a response now, otherwise it gets in a queue.

It would help, if as a PP said, people knew how to write an efficient title or there is a clue in the text about deadline. If too often someone sends me 'urgent' work which actually could wait several months, I'll stop taking their request seriously.

Obviously you're not as busy as some people. I do the work of 2 people easily, we have month end where emails are bottom of the pile as there's so much else to do. 12 hour days, stressful times. I'm not making that a 14 hour day just to satisfy people like you who think I havent discovered the right strategy yet. The right strategy is get month end done then I'll deal with it.

Well, this is the issue. Them not managing their emails effectively causes them huge, far more time-consuming issues down the road due to complaints and mistakes being made that wouldn't have been made of communications hadn't been ignored.

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".

Are we colleagues? This perfectly describes a lot of my job.

I can see both sides of this. I work in an environment where prompt responses to emails are a requirement. If I don’t respond to a client email within a couple of hours I’m in trouble: if I left it more than 24 hours I’d be in deep shit.

I do think a fairly large amount of email traffic is performative corporate territory pissing: showing people you are “on it”, asserting authority or creating an impression of efficiency (often masking a lack of effectiveness). I can see why it generates burnout and cynicism and people can’t be arsed.

That said I have been doing what I do long enough to be pretty scandalised when someone takes a fortnight to reply to an email. There’s really no excuse for that if you want to keep your job and in the world we inhabit it’s bordering on passive aggression. It takes 30 seconds to type a short acknowledgment. No one is too busy or too disorganised to respond to a work email within a couple of days.

Are you a heath and safety officer op ?

I do think there are lots of places where the culture and workload won’t allow it but I know in my immediate team it’s actually certain colleagues who equate being busy with being important and so need to let everyone know how very busy they are at all times.

It sounds like you have a lot of meetings breaks to do this system though. I've had three days this week that we're back to back 9-5 meetings so any emails I've answered have been me sitting up all evening. Maybe your colleagues have more of a backbone than me over their work life balance.

I have hundreds of emails a day. I don't leave weeks between replying

I regularly move mine to an ‘archive’ folder when I have too many. That way I can still find them if I need them. I can honestly say that out of the 50 - 100 emails I get a day now, maybe 1 or 2 of them are actually valuable, the rest are just distractions from doing my actual job.

I never work longer than my contracted hours and abhor the culture of working in your own time. It's toxic and unhealthy and unnecessary.

Yes, this really resonates, especially having the subject line appropriately completed.
Too many people don’t seem to grasp why that is vital.

Yabu. I've been on Mumsnet since 2006 and I doubt I've ever read a more tedious op or thread subject.

Same here, so I kick the quick wins and useless crap out of my inbox and into my archive ASAP. My inbox (ie. where my active emails are) rarely has more than 20 emails in if I haven't just come back from leave.

😂😂😂 It is incredibly tedious, but something that drives me nuts!

I don't need a system. I need more hours in the day.

No, you need a system. If your workload is truly unmanageable (by everyone!), your employer needs to hire more staff or work out their own better systems. You shouldn't need more hours in the day to do what you are contracted to do.

Tell you what is a great way to manage email...stop bluddy sending so many. I get so much crap. The colleagues who insisted on copying people in and then bang on for twenty replies. The people who will only operate with emails and won't use teams or the phone or heaven forbid, speak in person.

I asked someone to remove me from the CC yesterday and I'm going to do that more.

I guess it depends on your organisation, but my job has lots of elements and time for admin is a smaller one. Some colleagues in a different role are entirely at their desks in admin roles. Drives me bonkers to be away from my desk for 2-3 hours and return to fifty emails. I guarantee maybe 5 are important.

It really depends on the job.

Sometimes it’s more efficient to ignore emails, depending on what you are being paid to do.

I suspect your colleagues are aware of your system. But it’s a variation on a 20ish years old “inbox zero” system that assumes about 50 email per day. A lot of people have a lot more than that. Latest thinking really is just to automate and ignore.

Unless these are people doing the exact same job as you, in which case it does sound like they are just inefficient.

Yes same job.

‘Your employer needs to hire more staff’
😆

But you’re clearly in a role which is structured to allow you to do that on a regular basis. Lots of other people aren’t. That doesn’t make them any of the things you’ve been calling them, it just means that emails aren’t their priority.

We do the same job!!!

No they need more hours in the day! So many work places are short staffed and expect far too much from people. They only time I ever operated under your system was when my day wasn't too full and I had plenty of downtime. Surely you understand that people are all different levels of busy??