Corporate Email Etiquette - Dead or Alive? 504
mbravo writes "I work in a largish company, heavily into IT, and in a complex and quickly changing market. Employees are predominantly in the 30 or younger age-bracket, and as you might expect we rely on a lot of internal e-mail. Despite that, lately I'm finding myself increasingly frustrated by a complete lack of e-mail etiquette in the company. A typical thread might look like a hundred-message-long chain of one-line replies, with full quoting and hundreds of recipients in the 'To:' field. It feels like it is happening more and more often. I don't seem to be seeing much success in explaining to my co-workers what the problem is here. How do you deal with this at your place of business, and does your company care? Does the company take any policing or educating measures?"
With gmail (Score:4, Interesting)
With Gmail. It's intelligent filters screen out the quoted text, and by displaying email as threads (aka conversations) instead of just chronologically it makes dealing with a large volume of correspondence much easier. It's not perfect, but it's a damn sight better than any other email system I've used.
It's also a cause of the problem described (Score:5, Interesting)
Gmail removes somethings that were an annoyance when I used pine/thunderbird, and now I just press "reply all" most of the times, and don't bother cleaning subject or to:/cc: fields. But the "reply all" feature should reply to everyone in the discussion, not just to the ones that were included in the last email.
Ad-Hoc email lists should be easy to set up..
Re:It's also a cause of the problem described (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It's also a cause of the problem described (Score:5, Insightful)
well if your like me you can't remember 90% of what was said over the phone, but it's real easy to look it up if someones sent you an email.
Re:It's also a cause of the problem described (Score:4, Funny)
Re:It's also a cause of the problem described (Score:4, Insightful)
Just keep the meeting minutes yourself and get him to sign off on them.
Re:It's also a cause of the problem described (Score:5, Insightful)
Phones and instant messaging interrupt the recipient. Sending out a "Drinks at XYZ tonight?" email to five coworkers is not worth disrupting five people with phone calls who could otherwise check their email on their own schedules.
Using a phone when it is not necessary is even worse in many cases.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's also a cause of the problem described (Score:4, Funny)
Re:It's also a cause of the problem described (Score:4, Funny)
Re:It's also a cause of the problem described (Score:5, Funny)
Gmail removes somethings that were an annoyance when I used pine/thunderbird, and now I just press "reply all" most of the times, and don't bother cleaning subject or to:/cc: fields.
On behalf of your poor coworkers...stop doing that. I can't stand the morons in my company that can't distinguish between the reply and reply all buttons. Second to that in annoyance is the people who indiscriminately send company wide emails.
Seriously. With about half a second of actual thought you can actually avoid clogging everyone else's inbox with crap.
But the "reply all" feature should reply to everyone in the discussion, not just to the ones that were included in the last email.
Actually, whoever came up with the reply all button should be tried for war crimes at the Hague.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Someone did that at our place last week with a party invitation that was sent to the entire company (150+ people). To make matters worse, the mail had a very large attachment on it, so we all ended up 3 copies of the attachment.
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Along those same lines, I think gmail's filtering of the repeated text is aweso
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sorry (Score:3, Insightful)
The automatic exclusion of quoted text when you read a discussion thread where people just include the old messages for references. But still showing vital parts of quoted text if the email uses the quoted text in line and comments on specific parts. Gmail almost always get it right, and all you have to do is press r write what you want to say a
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Re:With gmail (Score:5, Insightful)
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If It's On Gmail, It Isn't Internal Email (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That's a feature that most of have always taken for granted. Long-time Windows users, on the other hand, will no doubt consider such a feature as novel, given that historically, Outlook and Outlook express were incapable of such an ordinary function, and their users had probably never seen a threaded message list of email or newsgroup posti
My experience (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:My experience (Score:5, Informative)
Re:My experience (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes even in the case you outlined it is a CYA. It is ALSO an organizational tool, a project management tool and
This is not an XOR logic problem.
Re:My experience (Score:5, Interesting)
I took to following up his phone calls with a summary e.mail, outlining his demands on my time and effort. He got mad and told me to knock it off, that there was no need for e.mails when a phone call was sufficient, etc. I persisted, prefacing it with, "Just so I have it clear what you want me to do." He stopped the vampire routine, at least with me.
Re:My experience (Score:5, Insightful)
Planning, etc is much better done by talking or even by IM, but people manage to come away with different impressions on what was agreed on, so a written note removes that ambiguity. Which seems a good thing.
I like to get things in writing (either an email, or a bug tracking/project tracking database entry) when I'm tasked with something. Both for the lack of ambiguity and for the self interested reasons of it providing a record of why I'm behind on other things (you had me do this first) and for CYA (record X was deleted because you said to do so in Y).
Email makes that such records very easy. I've worked with someone who would tell you to do X, and then a week later disavow all knowledge of ever having done so when it turns out X wasn't actually such a great idea - a cheap, fast written record is a wonderful thing.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
CYA is the biggest reason around here for using e-mail (and keeping a multi year archive of both my inbox and outbox).
"Gee Mr. manager, the batteries finally failed due to overheating... Yup, here's my e-mail from last year telling you we needed to upgrade the cooling. And here's my e-mail from 3 years ago saying the same thing (with your reply saying you'll deal with it later)."
The problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps there is no problem... Or maybe you are the problem...
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously. Who cares? Maybe mbravo should demand a full refund of the price he's paying for email at his company due to the unsatisfactory service.
Beware of Litigation! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Beware of Litigation! (Score:5, Funny)
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Spelling and Grammar (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Spelling and Grammar (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, taht's my biggest complaint. They should of learned grammer in school.
It's Free..... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, they need educating.
Different tool (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
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...which completely and utterly misses the point of using a corporate IM server. Let me put it this way: I'd cheerfully send a root password to a coworker over our internal Jabber setup. Would you send the same of YIM?
Re:Different tool (Score:4, Funny)
This text added to reach the 100 character minimum so that it isn't marked as spam.
Re:Different tool (Score:5, Insightful)
I work in a fairly large group and we have several methods of communication:
IM- for talking to one person right now.
Email- for messages- Or conversations of a very temporary nature- like "where should we go for lunch"
PHPBB- for almost all question/answer type communication. This is extremely helpful because the experienced architects and build team can give advice or answer questions just once.
Wiki- For internal documentation and build instructions.
Since we setup the wiki and BB our email traffic has been drastically reduced. The only emails to the entire group that I see anymore are to welcome new people and announce donuts.
Re:Different tool (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Nevermind the fact, that it may get your employer in trouble and most likely get you fired.
Jeez, if you are doing something that may get you or your employer in trouble then stop doing it (or better yet don't do it in the first place). Having an ethical workplace does not mean doing a better job of hiding your bad deeds. If you are concerned about privacy then wait until you get home.
Maybe get me fired, but no way in hell it can get the employer in trouble. Private conversation is a private conversation, just because it went on over IM doesn't mean it needs to be logged. They don't require audio recordings of every room in the building to be logged 24/7, so why should they require IM to be logged? Do they record your inter-office phone calls (not counting things like help desk phone lines, that's slightly different)? Why the hell should it be not only a right but a requirement that yo
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
SOX is only in reference to financial statement or items that may impact your financial statement. You can either have policy against using IM for any financial conversations, or a trigger system that detects communication that may be related to financials, which then logs the relevant portion of the conversation, but most companies don't even do that because of states like Washington that requires both parties have to agree to have a conversation recorded.
However, large companies will also
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All the IM stuff is logged but only in the event of an audit. Keeping all of the techie correspondents in your email means that writing the doc the night before the projects goes live (our projects tend to be short, on the order of 1-2 months so it rarely mounts up to a hu
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What's the problem? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, what is the problem? Do you just not like long e-mail threads, or is there a legitimate concern here?
Convincing them there's a legitimate problem, aside from your ideal form of etiquette, ought to be step one. Otherwise - why would random_employee_002 do anything different?
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Not everyone lives in the USA, and the rules are different in other countries!
(Some of us actually do roam!)
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But really, should that be your problem? Remember, these are professional mails, which you do not read on your own time, but on company time. If it takes you 3 times as long to read it, than so be it. It's not your time lost, it's your boss'es. Just make sure you don't stay one second longer because of these mails. If somebody brings up your low productivity, then, in
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Re:What's the problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not 'his' ideal form of etiquette - it used to be quite common and well understood.
Forum (Score:3, Insightful)
And your point is? (Score:5, Insightful)
If your problem is that your mail server can't handle all these mails, it's time to upgrade the mail server and/or switch to different software.
Part of the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I'd suggest the second should be characterised as "written, edited and formatted for the benefit of the recipient rather than the convenience of the sender". A fairly popular signature that reflects one aspect of the obviousness of this is the following:
A: Yes.
Q: Are you sure
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I hate the new chick in Sales or the Director of marketing that has a 1.2meg photo background, a 3.4meg digital signature image, and uses wierd fonts on all their emails.
HTML email is the most evil and worst thing ever created in the world, and outlook gladly let's you abuse the damn feature.
I dont like my email box clogged to the hilt because you want a foofy image and pretty font. Oh and marketing sending everyone a Copy of a 130meg
Part of the solution (Score:3, Informative)
In other words, "Outlook style" is the problem. Outlook QuoteFix [in.tum.de] is the solution.
Re: Corporate Email Etiquette - Dead or Alive? (Score:5, Funny)
{Unclassified}
-----Original Message-----
From: mbravo@spb.ru
Sent: January 22, 2008, 10:39AM
To: Slashdot-all@slashdot.org; phobos13013@corporate-email.com; digg-all@digg.com; bob2074@dobbs.com; bob@aol.com;
Subject: Corporate Email Etiquette - Dead or Alive?
i don't get it (Score:2)
(granted, gmail does it better, but not all of our employers are as enlightened in that regard.)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:i don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:i don't get it .... it's wasting people's time (Score:3, Informative)
Consider an average prole on (say) $30/hour. If they get 10 of these dumb emails a day, each of 200 lines it will take a few minutes to read each one. Call it about 30 minutes per day or $15. If just one person responds to each of the 100 people on the email, that takes each of those 100 people another 1 minutes to read the new stuff = 100 minutes = $50 per responder, per email.
If 10 people respond to 10 emails a day (all sent to 100 people), that's $5k/
E-mail vs. chat... (Score:2, Interesting)
different modes of collaboration (Score:2, Interesting)
Stop using email for all electronic communications (Score:4, Insightful)
Look into putting up an IM server, a wiki, blogs, online discussion groups, etc. Email is poorly suited to the kind of long-running threads you're talking about. One size does NOT fit all.
Re:Stop using email for all electronic communicati (Score:2)
Yeah, like speech. I hear it's getting pretty advanced now. You can use those new fangled electromagnetophone things.
voice mail (Score:2)
Or perhaps you have an easy way of doing forward with voicemail, would be fun..
samething in my work place (Score:2)
"I work in a largish company, heavily into IT, and in a complex and quickly changing market. Employees are predominantly in the 30 or younger age-bracket, and as you might expect we rely on a lot of internal e-mail. Despite that, lately I'm finding myself increasingly frustrated by a complete lack of e-mail etiquette in the company. A typical thread might look like a hundred-message-long chain of one-line replies, with full quoting and hundreds of recipie
Management (Score:2)
Also, it's considered "proper" to top-post and include all prior emails in the chain so that one can easily reference previous points of the conv
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A: Yes.
Q: Are you sure?
A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
Q: Why is top posting annoying in email?
Especially in emails that address a lot of complicated things in one mail, and require a response to each (rather than 'who wants lunch?'), it's *so* much easier to follow the style:
You have to be stern (Score:5, Funny)
Beatings and electrocutions. It may work differently outside the gulag, but I wouldn't know.
We're experimenting with other methods. Here's a picture [theseventhvoyage.com] of our recent IT hires. We give them free reign in deciding disciplinary actions.
(blank) (Score:2)
I set up a rule that made a subject mandatory.
include body text (Score:2)
Short answer: Yes. Long answer: Yes, absolutely. (Score:2)
E-mail Conversations (Score:4, Insightful)
People, have your conversation, come to some conclusions, and e-mail me a brief summary.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The only times I've resorted to that were when I was being stonewalled by a coworker and I wanted my boss to see all the excuses I was forced to deal with.
Well, is the email crap stuff (Score:2)
I do two things (Score:2)
If I get mails inside those "one line above, full quote bottom", I just cut everything below the quote, and reply in the good old style. At least I put a "break" into such threads.
But actually, most quick things get decided via Jabber (in house server) anyway
Disable "Reply to All" (Score:4, Insightful)
Trimming the top-posting is slightly less important-- people just delete the previous messages to have a nice archive. That is, if someone didn't trim early!
Re: (Score:2)
We had a reply storm of "please remove me from this list" after 1 person got sick of downtime notifications.
After that We locked down the All Staff list but then someone really wanted to reply so he expended the sub lists and replied to all of them.
Funny how they never reply after I tell them that quick nasty "I'm so sick of these messages, remove me now!!" bitch letter went to over 1,000 people including the CEO
Agree with the problem (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes. (Score:2)
Intra-office communication is a little more lax, but the basic etiquette rules are always followed.
The problem is not the employees but the employers. If they don't want proper etiquette, there's nothing you can do about it. If they do, they have been very lax and ma
Re: (Score:2)
Dead (Score:5, Insightful)
Email etiquette is dead. Has been for years. Some things I've noticed which contributed to its decline:
There is probably more but I can't think of them right now. The main problem is that no-one is taught any etiquette and (as they've never used UNIX or posted in news forums) they haven't had any kind of etiquette forced on them by an application or verbally beaten into them by some irate news group member.
Blame Outlook (Score:2)
Getting companies to handle sane quoting is going to take a big change from Microsoft and a big cultural shift. I don't expect it any time soon. The habits are far too ingrained at this point.
(And, yes, I know where are plug-ins/hacks for Outlook that reformat e-mail. I have yet to get any of them to work. They seem to be based on a loophole that
Dead (Score:3, Interesting)
In my experience, it's dead. My office has a bit of an informal tone, but I get emails from external businesses we deal with that have spelling mistakes, IM speak ("... if UR able 2..."), and other things.
We've received emails that are clearly accusatory that we've failed at something, or something is our fault. We've had people fly off the handle when we reply that that's not the case with evidence attached (my favorite: when it's a quote from one of their earlier emails).
Things just still surprise me. Yesterday I got an email from one of the highest ranking people in our sales/marketing department. It was all very business and sort of what I'd expect, until the second to last line which was... "kthxbye".
People (both internal and external) are often far less proper and "businessey" (I hate to use that fake word, but I don't know what else to use) than I would expect. The etiquette is gone (not that it was probably ever there).
The customer is always right (Score:3, Insightful)
A solution (Score:5, Interesting)
Second, never ever put something in writing what you wouldn't want to have to explain at court. There's no reason for it. Be offensive as you like face to face, in meeting or on the phone, but always the voice of reason in mails or chat. Never take part of bad-mouthing people in written, you simply don't know who will read it.
About mails where you're on the CC: list: ignore anything where you're only on CC. If the sender would have intended it for you, he'd put you on the To: list.
For mails where you're on the To: list, the question is if you're the only one. If there are other people on it and things need to be done based on it, assume someone else from the To: list will do the work and ignore it. If it the sender intended something specially for you, he'd should have sent you the mail addressed only to you.
Mail containing meeting minutes of meetings you didn't attend, ignore them. I something relevant to you was discussed there, you'd either have been invited or someone would have had the task to inform you about it. Wading through other peoples meeting minutes isn't productive.
All this sounds harsh and should only apply to mails you don't care about, but in reality works quite well. For the CC: I always liked to blame it on my clever spam filter that failed to highlight it as non-spam because I'm not a recipient. People get very miffed about that but somehow seem to slow to come up with good arguments against it. For the other mails you ignored, it's best to ramp that up slowly starting by the most stupid ones. The more mails you ignore, the less people expect you to read them.
If some mail asks for work to be done and you're on the To: list and you don't feel safe enough to ignore it completely, in big organisations a good way to cover your arse is to ask the original sender for a meeting of all people on the To: list to schedule resource allocations. If you are creative, add to that mail a few additional people, best some with opposing agendas. That usually puts off tasks for long enough for them to become irrelevant.
About the endless quotes and attachments, what works best is never to quote the whole thing. Always remove all quotes except a very few you are replying to. That has the advantage, that people see only what you want them to see. Most people won't find the original message in their inbox anyway. It's also a good idea to cut down on the recipient list (just leave enough to cover your backside). That divides te recipient crowd into groups with different information, which always can be useful, in case people start to blame you. Then you can fob it off to someone else you informed but who didn't act on it.
Also avoid short mails, except if they're very positive to you. Present the case with advantages and caveats. Instead of quotes, start your mail with a short - and naturally also biased in your favour - summary of the matter at hand. That forces people to read and think your mail, instead of scanning just for know thread patterns. Most likely, this will exceed most people's attention span. The additional advantage of restating all the important aspects of matter is, that people will sometimes go into discussions about that or will feel uncomfortable to disagree. I always liked to bring up matters like involving the legal department, safety and health regulations, compliances of any kind, or of everything else fails the involvement of the quality control department for affairs I wanted to get rid off. You'd be surprised how few people dare to put in writing, that they don't want to make sure those things are done properly.
This should give you in the middle term some lee-way to ignore mails as you see fit, and people will get very cautious of asking for your help. And, as a side benefits, you sometimes are able to collect mails that are always very popular if your company happens to be investigated for some misdeeds.
Cheers.
Re:Get gmail (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
The truth is that nothing competes with gmail like interfaces atm, pine and mutt are very very fast but that's the only thing they have got going for them.
Re: (Score:2)
Do you know which ISPs router/switches your external e-mail took to get to the recipient?
If you are that paranoid then use encryption.
Re:Get gmail (Score:4, Informative)
TFA was about internal corporate email, not about personal email.