How long to reply to an email

[pamelanoon]

If i havent replied to an email one day after it was sent, i get an email from my boss asking why it was not replied to.

I could still be checking out some things before replying.

Is this excessive. It feels like it is to me. How long does your boss give you to reply

I think responses will be entirely industry dependent. I'd reply to my boss within 2 hours max, but much of our work is time sensitive. If I can't reply quickly then I'll send a quick holding email saying 'i need to do x before I respond and it should take me y hours'.

Depends on the company policy I suppose and the importance of the email. You could have always sent a holding email saying you were looking into it and will get back to them asap.

I think a day is a long time to not have replied. If there was extensive checking to do, you could pop over a placeholder: "Thanks for your email. I'll check and get back to you asap"

I don't feel like I have time to send a holding email.
I have so many tasks to do that are not emails, then i am also receiving emails from 50 different people every day

I am in a job where i can recieve a hundred emails in a day. Its not possible to reply to all of them on the same day as i do not have time.

I reply to them by need of urgency.

My boss often sends me non urgent emails that can be replied to later on

Fair enough, then you need to discuss with your boss

A day is a long time to not have replied to an email, it wouldn’t be acceptable where I work. If I’m not able to provide a thorough response quickly I have a holding email I send, it’s a saved template I’ve made just like a signature on an email really so takes 2 seconds to send.

If you’re reading them to triage their urgency, it only takes a few secs to reply and give an ETA for a response?

Are you in a job where you are at your computer all day though?

I have a lot of tasks in my job where i have to be away from the computer. So i only have about 1- 2 hours at the computer and to try and get through the mountain of emails

I receive around a hundred emails a day and am not at my desk all day. Some I delete. Others are read and filed. Some I respond to immediately and others will need investigation.

If my manager sends an email I need time to respond to, I send a one liner letting them know. Something like “I need to check this out with the solicitor dealing with X and will get back to you “

You do have the seconds necessary to do that surely?

Not if I get called away from the computer to do another task, which often happens

No I don't.

And it' not just me. There are two other people on my team, they also feel that they don't have time to respond to our bosses emails as quickly as she wants.

It sounds like your boss thinks these emails are a higher priority than you have given them 😂

No I’m not at a computer all day, it depends on the day but large parts of my role are meetings, clients, visits etc during which time I don’t have access to emails but I do ensure I have a look before end of day, reply to anything urgent, send holding emails for anything I can’t immediately reply to, and others would be dealt with first thing in the morning.

If you feel your workload is unbalanced though you should speak to your manager- I assume you’re not the only person working like this in which case everyone would be struggling to reply by manager’s timescale?

Yes everyone is struggling to reply to her timescale

A day seems very reasonable to me, as a secondary teacher. Most of us are in class all day bar 3 working hours a week, so to see it at the end of the day it was sent and reply the next morning would be quick, and only possible if there was no finding out/speaking to anyone else or by working after hours.

Then it’s time to all together go chat to your manager.

She should be aware of your workload so just present it as adults- you want us to do x & y those tasks take Z time, our hours are these, demonstrate the issue you’re having with timings. It may be that she wants you to reprioritise.

Prioritise your managers emails

We have done already. She never listens to us.

Its her way or the high way.

In fact, she is the type that seems to like making people suffer

I emailed our finance team about a query last week and they took a week to reply to me.

I didn't mind as im not sure who is on annual leave at what time, and i also know they are very busy

The email your boss was complaining about, was it from her?

If so, set an email rule to make all her emails appear in a different colour and then they will standout in your inbox and you can prioritise them.

You need to talk to your boss and agree some kpis across your team for responses and then set up automatic responses setting out your response times in line with this.

No sometimes she complains about me not replying to other people's emails by one day later.

She is cc'd into them.

I have said to her that i dont have enough time to answer them all in one day, but she didnt listen

We already have done. She disagreed with us.

We went in and told her that we dont have enough time to do it all as quickly as she wants. She disagreed with us and said that we need to reply more quickly

Wow I’m feeling a bit humbled by these responses - it routinely takes me days if not weeks to respond to emails!