Blackberry brings email to your phone

The blackberry can be set to buzz or vibrate when an email arrives. Picture / Greg Bowker

Anyone with an email account knows how addictive an inbox is. You do a bit of work, check the inbox ... If you have a broadband connection, it's probable you read each new message instantly.

You know someone is addicted to email if they get it on a mobile device such as the Blackberry, a PDA or a mobile phone, and they set it up to beep, buzz or vibrate every time a message comes in. One minute you're deep in conversation, the next the email addict is fumbling for the device and saying "Sorry, I just need to get this, won't be a second."

Those seconds may be what is wrong with email use in the work environment. Consider what happens when May, who sits on one side of an open plan office, asks June, on the other side, for a file. Instead of walking around the partitions and getting blood flowing, May emails June sends the file to May as an email attachment. May emails her thanks ...

Still, email is fast and convenient. But is micro-emailing good for us?

In a 2004 Siemens Communications-commissioned survey, social researchers at the University of Surrey found that expectation and demand for instant and constant communication added to workplace stress and caused anger among colleagues and strangers alike.

The survey revealed that though modern office workers resent the distractions caused by intrusive communications, they paradoxically become stressed and impatient when they're the ones trying to make contact and can't raise a response.

Professor Michael Warren of the University of Surrey says the survey highlights the need to establish workplace rules around instant communication, and for management to take a lead in setting standards.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Jeremy Burton, then the vice-president of marketing for data storage company Veritas Software (now owned by Symantec), explained his growing annoyance over the proliferation of email and his subsequent decree that Fridays in his department would be email free. If any one of Burton's 240 staff wanted to get a message to a colleague on a Friday, they had to pick up the phone and call, or go over and chat in person. Violators were fined $1 for each e-mail they sent, with the money going to charity. Burton said the policy got his people walking, talking and laughing and helped them to think through what they emailed and when.

"Email is supposed to be this big productivity tool. But it's getting to the point where it is out of control," Burton said.

Ironically, Warren says technology has an important part to play in the control of any negative impacts from email.

"Technology tools and processes are needed that allow us to manage our communications with the maximum degree of availability and the minimum degree of frustration."

Along with many mobile communication and telecommunications specialists, Siemens Communications sells applications which let users manage their communications availability and monitor the contact status of colleagues.

One example is the Siemens Openscape application, which works alongside Microsoft's Live Communications Server and is used to show the availability and preferred method of contact for an office worker.

Siemens has also devised guidelines for using instant communication technologies but, however you do it, Siemens says its user trials prove people who take control of instant communication technologies and "break out of email jail" save an average 30 minutes a day in wasted calls and messaging.

Siemens' eight simple rules

1. Have your mobile off or on silent in meetings.

2. Change your mobile voicemail to request text for urgent messages.

3. Turn device screens off when holding meetings in your office.

4. If you are expecting an urgent call, apologise and warn others in advance.

5. The person you are talking to always deserves your full attention.

6. Hold private calls in private.

7. Break out of email jail - talk to your colleagues.

8. Technology is not power - it doesn't signify your importance.

And a few from the net:

* Think about whether email is most effective for the communication you're making.

* Keep your email messages friendly and personable; use manners.

* If angry at an email, cool off before considering the wisest way to reply.

* When you send an email it can end up anywhere in the world. Remember that.