So the summer is coming to an end and many of us will have taken some time off from work. Did you come back to the inevitable backlog of emails or did you try to mitigate it by sorting through them on holiday when your other half wasn’t looking?
Email has revolutionised our working lives but it’s also become the bane of them and mostly that’s because our working practice around emails is very poor. A friend recently told me that when someone in her office sends her a long, complicated email she asks them to come to her desk and explain it to her in person. Are you guilty of emailing a desk neighbour when you could just ask or tell them the info in person?
Have a look at these email scenarios and tell me how many you recognise.
You open a long email but quickly lose the will to live so close it again before knowing why the person was messaging you.
You have to send someone a second email to chase them because they haven’t replied to your first message.
You ask someone several questions in an email but when they reply they don’t seem to have read it properly because they haven’t supplied all the information you requested.
You fairly often feel that someone is angry or upset with you when you receive an email, or you get a reply that suggests someone has misconstrued your tone or intent.
You start the day with an achievable To Do list but spend your time fire fighting in emails and only tick one or two things off the list, facing a longer list tomorrow.
You find yourself copied into a group email that’s of little relevance to you and end up dealing with multiple messages as everyone in the group replies.
You’re worried about an email situation and CC or BCC your boss so they can see what’s happening, even though they don’t need to know about what you’re dealing with.
I’m sure you’ve had all of these things happen to you, maybe many times each week. Are there any more email clichés I’ve missed? Share them with me in the comments.
All of these situations are caused by inefficient writing in emails. Or by sending emails for issues which would be better dealt with in person or by phone. And they all cost us a tonne of work time which would be better spent on doing our actual jobs. And therefore they are also costing our organisation money.
That’s why your boss needs you to write better emails so you can spend more time focused on the job they’re actually paying you for. Because even if you felt in the situations above that you were the victim of poor email etiquette, ten to one others have felt the same about messages you’ve sent.
Part of the problem is we treat emails less as a tool and more as a conversation. Or we write them in the same way that we would write a letter; creating long, waffly emails that no one can be bothered to read. In fact, although we’re all very familiar with email, few of us have ever considered how to write them effectively, and there is a genuine art to writing an efficient and succinct email.
As a journalist I learned to write clear, efficient sentences that tell you everything you need to know about a news story in the first couple of lines. So one of the key takeaways from my business writing course is a simple trick that will help get your emails noticed, opened, read and responded to creating huge efficiencies at work for you and your respondents.
One other cool tip to take away is something I practice as a content designer, which entails writing content for websites using UX (User Experience) principles to ensure the website is effective in sharing the information its audience is looking for. This can be quite challenging at first for companies which are used to sharing content around the messages they want their audience to know. Often however these are not the same thing.
If you consider your email’s audience and what they need from the interaction before you write it, undoubtedly you will frame your message in a way that’s more engaging to them and they are far more likely to read it and respond to it.
My course spends time considering your audience and writing for them, rather than focusing on your own needs. Doing this we look at pitching your message at the right level, tone of voice, the style of writing, the language you use, how to create emphasis and so on. These are all things you do automatically but never think about. Taking the time to consider them, plan and practice, breaking old habits and building better ones will help streamline your working life and should reduce the time you spend on emails.
Why not click through to learn more about what the course covers and see how it could help you?