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?

Poor time management!

Most people are pretty shit at managing their workload, whether that be taking on too much and not getting help, too controlling/on a power trip and don't delegate, sitting in back to back meetings all day to look and feel important, procrastinating....the list goes on.

Add into this the new self entitled wfh 'bum around' culture we are now breeding and this is what you get!

An overwhelming inbox, can't be arsed, don't actually know how to answer lack of response!!

Tell that to the Government who have underfunded public services for the last 13 years.
We have about 25% of the staff we need to do our job properly.

It really isn't about 'systems'.

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.

Well, lucky you.

Not really helpful for all the people caring for others who have been forced into this position though, is it ?

I moved to a new team who is so used to complaining they’re busy it’s become an auto response. I covered a colleague’s inbox for a month (paternity leave) and it took less than an hour a day… that was 90% of his full time job! We log work and I managed 20% more work than he had done over the previous 6 months! (While doing my own full time job).

This is it. No one can possibly adequately deal with huge numbers of emails so they need to use the tools to manage them such as setting up rules, moving them into different folders based on subject, urgency, etc., or even just deleting the 90% which will be spam or irrelevant to clear the in tray leaving just things needing attention. Letting it build up and then spending whole days clearing it isn’t efficient - it just wastes a day. Ignoring things that need dealing with just means even more emails chasing you up.

I get 100s of emails a day, but a lot of my tasks are done via email so it is important that I am on top of them.

first thing when I log on is look at my inbox, delete the junk, read the others and note on my to do list any actions. Reply to any ‘quick wins’
then I look at me email in box several times an hour in between other tasks and triage emails as above.
I never log off for the day with unread emails on my inbox.

I work on a lot of different projects and clients expect a fairly rapid response, even if it’s a holding email. I also need to obtain information from lots of different people in order to mover projects forward and a lot of that is via email.

I'm in university studying law atm. One of our first lectures as students was how to manage our inbox. It's a skill. An essential one. I can't see how in an office environment it's ever okay to allow build up, or ignorance? Ime my personal gmail that I use for all sign ups? 100s of emails not relevant nor personal nor requiring any response or regard. My work email- lots of emails, most pointless but enough relevant that I need to pay attention and delegate or attend to the important ones in good time.

Well I have returned to teaching after a gap and I now have loads of emails to wade through. I did my job very well without email. In fact, it was more efficient to speak to someone in person and have morning meetings with the full staff rather than everyone have to read loads of ALL staff emails of pretty much no relevance.

People ought to email less and talk to people more. I honestly think it’s far less stressful, more human and more efficient. Plus it filters out all those unnecessary emails - of which there are many.

Yes, email is the modern version of the old paperwork in tray and pile of phone call back messages. Some people have always been bad at managing themselves.

This is exactly my system. Works really well.

So he's getting paid for getting away with doing a whole lot less work for that salary than you are. I think we can see who's winning in this scenario!

Hint: it's not you.

The main problem I find is that a lot of people think emails are for instant messaging and expect a response within minutes. Everybody also thinks their email is urgent and the most important. If I responded on the same day to all the emails I receive each day, I'd never actually get any work done.

I use the urgent- important matrix to prioritise my emails. So if someone has sent me an email that I rate as being neither important nor urgent then it goes to the bottom of my list. If they do this a lot then I set up a rule that sends their emails to another folder (or deletes it).

If people aren't replying to you then is it possible that they don't see the need to.

I find it can work both ways a lot of my emails are from people who they need to send individual emails and can't organise themsleves enough to not endlessly send emails I wonder how they actually get any work done they are contasantly emailing

I'm surprised there aren't management protocols in place. I work in operations in transport, and if I don't reply to emails within 20 minutes I get a phone call from the clients.

Years ago, I wasn't handling my emails within a one hour time frame. I had a sit down with managers to say I was overworked, and they knew I was. They ended up changing roles a bit so I could concentrate more on operations and divert some work to another department.

Even if the issue can't be resolved immediately, and quick email can be sent with acknowledgement and an estimated time to get back fully.

OP, I would bring this up to management since others not replying to emails directly affects your job.

I used to get more emails per day than I could read. Even using your scan system @FireworksAndSparklers , I would have got no other work completed.

I solved this for me, and most of the rest of my team by introducing two rules.

1. Emails were only to be sent to a single person. No cast of thousands. The person the sender wanted action from was the only person in the 'to' box. If they needed anyone else to be aware, that person was bcc'd. This stopped anyone irrelevant from commenting, and also stopped the dreaded 'reply all'. Also it avoided any confusion as to who was expected to respond.
2. Everyone had to set up a rule that put any email bcc'd into a separate folder as it arrived to be read eventually / never when time allowed. That way their inboxes only contained emails where action was required from them.

The number of emails everyone was dealing with dropped by about 90%.

Fortunately, I was senior enough to make this happen. We also used teams and slack instant messaging, however I don't like my team being constantly interrupted and having to context switch. I'd rather they did fewer things properly than many things incompletely. So I encouraged them to use the do not disturb feature when they needed to concentrate.

If I had too many emails or not enough time to respond due to back to back meetings, I'd be pushing for change elsewhere to reduce the volume rather than look to deal with the volume if that makes sense?

Ask boss out of these 7 meetings which 4 shall I attend?
Or inform host you can only join first or last half of meeting.
Or ask boss which area of work you can hand over / outsource etc
Put long term plan in place for more help / less work
Promote calls / teams / WhatsApp culture to reduce emails

Send an IM instead

@TheCompactPussycat I earn a lot more than him and recently became his manager. The plus side of me stepping in to cover his work is that I have proven I know his job (a been a tricky few months with others undermining me - not this guy but I don’t doubt he believed the bs) and I can now get him working how I want and add in new projects without guilt. It’s really hard when people have jobs that aren’t fully measurable and they tell you they’re busy. Since I’ve upped his work load he’s actually much happier and has admitted he was feeling quite low and unmotivated.

I learned my whole team felt responding to emails within 3 weeks was fine… they were a bit shocked when I said 48 hours should be our target. Basically, everything had slipped and they were competitively busy but really not. Never experienced anything like it.

Why so they can ignore that instead and moan about the amount of IMs they get?

As an aside I hate IMs. It’s the equivalent of person after person walking up to your desk and demanding your time. I turn mine off for chunks of the day. Maybe why I can be more on top of my emails.

@TeenLifeMum - please come and manage my team

@Eightfour even if I say it myself, I’m a great manager (not perfect because I’m human but always learning). My team was a mess - great individuals but no leadership set them up to fail. We all want to feel like we’re doing a good job so managers should be supporting them to do that.

My system is to ignore the less important stuff until I have done the more important stuff

I will skim emails and ignore for weeks if I deem them less critical than what I am dealing with

Yabu.
I have loads of meetings and projects and days away from desk at my jobs. I need to delegate time to 'emailing' (although I do screen for anything genuinely urgent) and I have boundaries - three days is what we're told to reply within at my work.

I guess it's different for people whose whole job is desk bound or emailing but if you let each email interrupt you you'll never get any deep focus work done.

I share your frustrations OP. I can be in a Teams meeting for an hour however, and get up to 30 emails. It's literally impossible to do my job and keep up with the volume. It's even worse now so many people work from home as no one wanders up to your desk for a quick work convo which used to work a treat. It's all so overwhelming. I haven't yet found a strategy for it unless I want to work 10 hours a day every day.

I use a rule so that any email that isn't directly addressed to me - ie I'm in the Cc, or its an all company email gets shifted off to an other folder that I scan at.the end of the day. Keeps the inbox more manageable. Generally will either respond directly to emails in the inbox or convert them to as task to deal with later.