When email use becomes inappropriate

By ASHLEY CAMPBELL

The problem with email, is that it's all too easy. From the comfort of your desk you can send any sort of message to anyone - and often do.

Beverley Main, chief executive of the Human Resources Institute so aptly demonstrates this when she admits: "I've got people who sit about 10 feet from me and they still send me emails."

Often that's because email is the best way to communicate, even with a colleague sitting next door. When it's important that several people get the same message, or that there is a written record, email is the 21st-century medium of choice.

"Before email we had office memos, but that was more physical - you had to type them and hand them over," says Main. "Emails are good in that situation because you do have a record."

Or if you need to transfer a document to a co-worker, attaching it to an email is so much more efficient than printing it out and handing over the hard copy.

But too often it is used where a phone call or a face-to-face conversation would be more effective, as office products company Boise has recognised in its email use policy.

Under the heading of "inappropriateness" Boise's policy tells employees: "Before you send an email consider the efficiency and effectiveness of your choice of media. A 30-second phone call may save wasted minutes (even hours!) of to-and-fro email messages."

Peter Leathley, Boise's general manager of human resources, has mixed views about the merits of the medium. "I think email's great as an information-serving medium, but where people use it to chat, it's often inefficient."

In a paper on legally monitoring internet communication, Peter Tritt, manager of the Employers and Manufacturers Association (Northern) advisory services, points out some of the downsides of email use.

We have all experienced "information overload" when we're copied in on endless emails from endless colleagues, who think we might be interested. Tritt warns this could cause stress "as workers try to keep up with the number of emails received".

Then there's the problem of unthinkingly offending, or even defaming, colleagues.

"Abrupt, inappropriate and unthinking use of language can lead to bullying," Tritt warns. And without the non-verbal cues of intonation and body language, it's so easy for the receiver to get the wrong message.

But no one sees banning internal email as a solution.

"You can see why people go to these extremes at times," says Tritt, "but banning it altogether internally is going too far - you lose all the advantages it brings."

Not only that, but a company would have to restrict internet access so employees couldn't set up Hotmail accounts to circumvent the ban, says Microsoft New Zealand's communications manager, Carol Leishman.