White Paper Provides Roadmap to Company Email Initiatives
Salient's new white paper is for business leaders who recognize email's drain on productivity—and want to do something about it.
We realized that business leaders ready to take on email need a clear-eyed view of the whole challenge. So we created a roadmap.
Bethel, CT September 06, 2012
EmailExcellence.com has published a new guide for business leaders on how to address email productivity in their companies. Entitled "Keys to a Successful Corporate Email Initiative," the free white paper details the factors critical to changing employee email behavior. It also spotlights key pitfalls of such efforts and how to overcome common obstacles.
Email inefficiency may be the single largest unaddressed productivity issue for knowledge workers. Most studies indicate that employees spend between one third and one half of each workday in email—which translates into one third to one half of each year.
Studies that gauge employees' proficiency with email reveal significant problems—even with routine messages. A 2011 study contains this finding: "Fewer than half of emails that required an action on the part of the recipient actually stated what that action was." The same study found that almost one in five emails was copied unnecessarily to staff members, and that thirteen percent were "irrelevant or untargeted." Yet almost half of employees studied felt their own emails were easy to read.
The author of the new white paper is Roy Speed, president of Salient, Inc., and creator of the Email Excellence program, versions of which are required training for more than 130,000 employees across North America. "We created this guide," Speed says, "for business leaders who recognize email's drain on productivity and want to do something about it." The white paper reveals essential lessons Salient has learned about employee email behaviors — and why traditional approaches (like a writing class) have little impact.
"Changing employee email behavior is not a challenge for the faint of heart. Half-measures will fail. We realized that business leaders ready to take on email need a clear-eyed view of the whole challenge. So we created a roadmap."
According to Salient, email is a "community" problem—and will yield only to "community" solutions initiated by company leaders. Salient aims to be a catalyst for such solutions through its website, blogs, online training, and free writing tools, all of which promote clear thinking and effective writing as the keys to email productivity.
