Are colleagues taking longer to reply / not replying to work emails now?

[JoyousOpalLemur]

Are people responding less to work emails now, or is it just me?

I've been in various jobs for more than a quarter of a century and started noticing pre Covid that some people took ages to respond to emails, or didn't respond at all. I initially thought it was just them, either they're poor at emailing or poor at work generally.

But since Covid, this has massively ramped up.

I've wondered if it's maybe me but I'm regularly cc'ed in group emails that start 'John, have you had a chance to deal with this email..'. I've wondered if it's younger people joining the workforce and coming from a WhatsApp culture rather than an email one, in which you either respond immediately or never, but there are several people in their 30s, 40s and 50s also doing this (although probably the majority are in their 20s and early 30s).

All the emails I'm referring to will require some sort of action. For some, it's just a simple not-that-important yes, no or will find that out for you, for a client, but not responding will be seen as rude, others it's essential for the business that something is done.

Is this a thing you've noticed or is it just me?

Exactly. I just spent several hours solidly working on a document. I'm in meetings all afternoon.

I check my emails twice a day at most. I like to remain focussed on whatever I am working on. If someone needs me urgently they call or send teams message

I write a lot of strategy documents, ToRs and reports in my role, and while I am considering best approaches etc. I will usually step away from the screen and do something active with my hands (folding laundry, going out into the garden, loading the dishwasher etc.) because I need that thinking time. My workplace pays me to think and do, not sit there being an email droid.

But... Answering emails is some people's job. How funny that you can make such a strong assertion about everyone in the whole world's job! I think this might represent everything that's wrong with the working world today actually.

How about you actually articulate what is wrong with my statement from your POV and provide a rebuttal rather than making a very vague statement followed by a passive aggressive emoji? You know, seeing as this is a discussion forum and all?

Pretty much every time management, don't be tied to your phone, anti procrastimation, dopamine detox self help book recommends not looking at your emails until an allocated time. E.g. don't let email interrupt your best quality working time.

for me - there are too many of them to deal with in a timely manner. I have to triage what is important / urgent / can wait. Add in 6 hours of meetings plus responding to teams messages and I feel pretty fucked by the end of the day to be honest. I’m as polite as I can be, but if people are getting all het up about others not replying promptly on stuff that can wait then it seems like a them problem.

It isn't vague. Do you have comprehension difficulties? Is that why you don't answer your emails?

You say that so many people think answering emails is their job. Well, some people have jobs where their job is indeed answering emails. I have had a few myself in my time. So when you say 'it really isn't' you are over generalising. And incorrect.

Hope that helps.

Oh more passive aggressiveness. Why do so many posters respond like this?

One more time: what might represent everything that’s wrong with the working world today actually? I am not a mind reader.

Judging by writing styles I’m going to make an assumption that it takes multiple emails back and forth to get to the point. Which is a great waste of time.

Surely replyjng to emails is just what dealing with correspondance or answering the phone used to be? I don't know how you can argue it's not necessary.

I do wonder if sending out reams of emails is a form of procrastination for some people. I guess it can make it seem like a lot is getting done when actually it’s anything but. And it ensures that the task/job that the email refers to never actually gets done as it is just passed from one person to the next. I see that in my organisation all the time, people not wanting to take ownership of a task so they ask another random question or make a comment and cc somebody else in to get it off their plate.

The fact that you assume you know everything about everyone else's jobs, love. That you feel able to tell everyone so confidently something that is just plain incorrect in such an arrogant manner.

You don't need to be a mind reader to extract that meaning from what I said, just able to read. Of course I don't think what you said represents everything that is wrong with the world of work today (though I am starting to), I was over-generalising like you did. That is a rhetoric device called hyperbole rather than passive aggression but you can call it that if you want to. Such things do require a basic level of literacy.

To be clear, it is very passive aggressive to ask yourself why so many posters respond in a particular way rather than saying it directly to me even if you have misunderstood my meaning.

But it's hot and I'm too narky to be on this thread I think. I'm taking myself off it. Good luck with your emails or lack thereof everyone.

It's a great question, I've learnt something from reading this thread, thankyou

Too many emails to respond to, especially if like me you are part time. Emails don’t stop when you’re not there.

Our workload is off the scale these days due to staff shortages and emails are just background noise when there are bigger priorities.

I wish people would send less comms.

In days gone by this would be the equivalent of an ‘in tray’ with hundreds/thousands of memos in, each awaiting an action. It’s ridiculous.

Proving my point entirely.

I am finding this too.

The company I work at uses emails. We have a service level agreement to respond in five days, in my team we try within 24 hours. Responding is not optional.

Some people don't want to use emails and would rather use Teams and Planner. They believe it saves time. It does not.

Also, "a quick Teams chat" does not audit responses or allow It to be shared or saved. It puts the onus on another person to take notes and send a recap email.

Not to criticise any poster, but I'm genuinely staggered by this thread.

I had no idea how negatively some people in the workplace view emails, and how incoherent that appears to me - all correspondence should be treated equally, it's the message that's important and worthy of triaging surely.

Definitely a lot slower than before

Teams is better, but email is necessary when you have to include action items

But I think that’s the point, most people seem to have stopped triaging and prioritising, instead copying everyone into email chains and going back and forth rather than actually doing the task that the email is about.

A recent example from my own workplace: the PA of one of our senior leaders received a scoping email from an external organisation asking about partnering with us on X. Rather than that PA then liaising separately with internal colleagues and gauging what the organisation’s response should be, she replied to the initial scoping email to say that she was copying in colleagues who might be interested. So she quite literally copied in 10+ colleagues from across the organisation of 3000 odd staff to basically ask if any of us were interested! In her mind that was then off her plate and she’d done her job. In actual fact all that happened was lots of people having to have offshoot emails and calls to discuss who was going to deal with it and what the response should be. All while the external organisation now has 10+ potential contacts rather than one, and for all we knew individuals in that email chain may have all responded separately.

Now when I got that email guess what I did? Nothing. Because I’m not doing someone else’s work for them just so they can push their workload on to others and clear their inbox.

If more people owned their own work and didn’t manically try and clear their inbox every day using whatever means possible then we would all have fewer emails to deal with.

I'd say we've always had an issue with people in client organisations not replying to emails, particularly if they're not directly involved with the project in question.
I also find people are very good at asking for things but not specifying when they need it by. If it's in the next hour or today then ffs call me or teams message me to check if that's even possible, and if it's sometime in the future put on the damn email so I can prioritise it and respond accordingly. Don't expect an immediate reply to an email because I am busy and work on several different projects and not wanting to chop and change between them all every time someone sends me an email!
But I agree that the communication skills of some younger people are horrendous and anyone under 30 seems to have a phobia of making phone calls.

This!

I get lots of:

“We have this prospective piece of work. We’ve received 200 questions, I’ve saved them here.”

it will be sent to 70 people, I am one of them. If all 70 of us open it up and spend 30 minutes skimming through 200 questions to see if any of them are even relevant then that’s 100 work hours wasted on skimming a spreadsheet, not even filling the bastard thing out.

Emails should be targeted contacts, that explicitly state the purpose of the communication, are sent only to those who need to see them and that calls out the exact ask for the recipients. If it doesn’t have that then I’m not replying.

Exactly, and the initial person who sent that on thinks they’ve completed a task when they’ve done nothing of the sort. That’s not work, it’s digital paper shuffling.

In the example I gave, the hourly pay rate of the people the PA copied in will have ranged from £20 to £80+ an hour - think of the time wasted if all those people read, considered and responded to the same email! The cost to the organisation is huge.

Yes for emails coming to me and my peer group and above, the hourly rate is £70+ so £7000 to read and email and figure out if you need to do anything about it. Absolutely ridiculous.

But @JoyousOpalLemur , you are failing to understand quite how self-important people are these days. Only the messages a person sends are important and worthy of attention. The messages they receive are beneath contempt.

It's not about self importance it's about working effectively

I treat emails like my in tray and review them a couple of times a day, I might not respond or answer them then, like with letters in the old days

I do keep teams open so someone can call with a very urgent question
We also have a group chat where someone can post a question and whoever sees it first and can help will answer

Most of my work requires long chunks of focus or complex discussion in meetings. It would be really poor practice to me constantly dipping into my inbox

Just today I was copied into an email about a meeting which resulted in literally 8 emails back and forth between three people about their plans for this meeting and what they need to discuss. The kicker is I won’t be attending this meeting, I was copied in “for info”. Why?! Just tell me the outcome of the meeting once you’ve had it!