Improve Communication at Work

Snoozing emails seems like a magical fix for all your productivity problems. But that’s only because you’re not doing much at all. You’re just putting off the task of dealing with emails until a later date – a problem for your future self to deal with.

Hiding away those unread emails might feel like an accomplishment, but really, it’s like putting all your unread magazines into a box. It’ll keep your desk clear for now, but what about tomorrow?

Using Microsoft Teams for all our 9East Marketing Services communications is the best and most effective solution, but I understand that emails still come in every day. So, what do you do with those emails? Hit the snooze button on an email for an hour, a day or even a week – whatever you like. But what about when the time comes? You can’t put them off forever.

What to do instead to improve communication at work

Cutting down emails at the source is the most effective solution. Unsubscribe to newsletters to stop them from cluttering your inbox. Discuss with your clients, colleagues and partners about using a program like Teams for all digital correspondence. This keeps your most important communications away from the email inbox, neatly organises your messages and allows you to spend less time in apps because of the speed of communication allowed by Teams.

However, if there are communications you can’t remove from your emails, many email service providers allow you to only receive notifications for important messages that tie in with what you’ve already spoken about. This makes it easier to manage your emails without needing to do anything different.

I also suggest entering email-related tasks into the planner app in Teams, rather than leaving your emails open all day. You can allocate an hour in the afternoon, for example, to actioning emails. Any email service providers also enable you to pause emails, which gives you more control over your time.

And that’s the problem with emails: it takes up our time and distracts us from our responsibilities. Deal with this problem at the source by using a dedicated program for your workplace communication needs. Limit the amount of time you spend in emails and don’t be tempted to snooze them!