A guide to managing your emails
How we work Our way of life has changed massively recently and is very different from the one we’re used to wherever you’re working from. Most of us can’t see colleagues in person at the moment and emails can be a great way to get a message out to a lot of people at once, but no-one wants to feel overloaded or overwhelmed by their inbox. So, we’ve pulled together a few tips and suggestions to help you manage your emails.
Working differently
A guide to managing your emails How we work Firstly, it’s worth thinking about whether an email is the best way to get in touch with someone. Would a call be better, or maybe you could have a quick Teams chat over a cuppa so you can see the person or people too? Teams is proving to be a fantastic tool for staying connected with each other, the business and with external people as well for catch-ups, team meetings, one-to-ones, to collaborate and just to see friendly faces while we’re at home. If you’re included in a group email, try and avoid using ‘reply all’ unless you have to. You could use your timeline on Channel to share information with lots of colleagues. Have a think before you press send… do you really need to cc lots of people into an email? You may notice that the new version of egress is excellent at spotting lots of cc’d people on an email and will ask you to think about the number of people you are emailing. If you need to know if someone’s read your email, you can always apply a read receipt. Don’t waffle in emails – emails longer than five lines are often hard to digest – so stick to the content, use short sentences rather than long paragraphs. Always re-read your email before you send it – does it make sense, is the spelling and grammar correct? Try reading it from the recipient’s perspective. We often receive a sea of emails a day, so make your subject line meaningful and use the tags available to flag anything as urgent or confidential, so it doesn’t get lost. If your email requires action, then make this clear, or if it is just for information, then make that clear too. Try to avoid attaching files – this simply increases the amount of data in circulation and also allows for various versions to be created – why not use SharePoint instead?
If you receive an email that requires a long and detailed response, and you don’t have time to respond today, the temptation could be to rush a reply, which may not fully answer or address the email. This often leads to more emails, so reply to let them know you’ll be back in touch with the detail by ‘x’ date. Here are a few practical but simple tips to managing your inbox so it doesn’t become a lengthy and sometimes daunting to-do list: • Why not take advantage of a great function called rules in Microsoft 365. • You can use inbox rules to automatically perform specific actions on emails that arrive in your inbox. •
You can set the rules function to file and manage regular emails and create files that are logical to the way you work. One significant benefit is the search function in rules is very powerful, so unless you have deleted it – you should always be able to find that rogue email.
• Avoid replying to emails that you are cc’d into, and if you do need to keep them, you could consider filling these away for future reference. • Promptly delete any junk mail. •
Use your out of office when you are away so people know when you are not available. It’s always good practice to include details of someone who can pick up an urgent email if you are going to be away for a period of time but if it’s not urgent let them know you’ll be in touch once you’re back.
Take a look on Channel as we’ve produced a fantastic Working at Thirteen Guide that really complements this document.