Create extra time each day – unchain yourself from the inbox

During this tough business climate we are all keen to find ways to improve productivity and profitability, but have you reviewed every possible business
process to squeeze just a little more out of the day and the available resources?

Email is acknowledged as the biggest source of lost time for businesses today, regardless of size and market sector, with most companies losing up to 21 days per person per year – half a day a week – through email misuse.

There are three major factors in such costly email misuse.

Overload. Most business people receive more than 50 emails a day – that’s one every nine minutes. Simply processing it all is time consuming and deleting unwanted mail is not the answer as that also takes time.

Quality. Like any other communication, an email from you and your business conveys an image about you and your business. A poorly written email is worse than not sending one at all and is often the tipping point in a business relationship which causes the recipient to go elsewhere. You may never know just how much that sloppy email cost you unless of course it ends up as evidence in court!

Care. The cost of defending a court case in which email evidence is used is relatively easy to quantify, but what about the cost of a careless email in which you accidently leak confidential information? It’s hard to put a price on the damage a slip up like this can cause to your business and reputation.

Over the last ten years, Mesmo Consultancy has trained more than 7,500 business people to save time by dealing with their email
more effectively.

Here are three top tips which have enabled those we have trained to turn email into a real business productivity tool rather than a major cause of stress and lost time and money.

Get it right first time. Communicate clearly what you are trying to say. No matter how long or short your message, don’t leave room for misunderstanding and misinterpretation about how serious you are as a business.

Get it in order. Prioritise which emails you really need to see in order to run your business effectively. Then
find ways to keep the rest out of the main inbox.

Don’t get distracted. Ignore new emails and stay focused until each task is complete, be that a sentence in a report or conversation in a meeting.

Many businesses have realised that investing two hours in training employees in email management quickly pays for itself and lowers the risk of a breach of confidentiality and improved communications, both internally and externally.

Try one of our Brilliant Email Management Master Classes. The next one is on Monday, July 9 from 9.30-11.30am in Bournemouth. See www.mesmo.co.uk for full details.

Dr Monica Seeley, founder of Mesmo Consultancy, has spent the last 15 years coaching and teaching a wide range of organisations and businesses to use email more effectively to improve personal and company performance. A visiting senior fellow at Cass Business School City University and Bournemouth University Business School, she has written several books on email best practice, the latest being Brilliant Email.

By Dr Monica Seeley