BY PETER WANYONYI
In today’s connected workplace, virtually everyone is drowning in email. Since the late 90s, email has become the most heavily used form of business communication, and nothing is about to change that – not even the advent of social media, with its chatting and profile status updates, comes close. “Do me an email” has become a salutary way of getting someone to commit thoughts into writing and unload them onto the corporate network.
As is expected for a medium that is so ubiquitous, email is regularly abused and used for ends other than what it was meant for. And, rather astonishingly for such an important communication tool, many corporates do not even have an email usage policy. It is left to individual employees to “use their heads” and figure out what to do when communicating within and without the organisation using corporate email. If your company doesn’t have an official email policy, here are a few pointers as to what should go into the email policy that you surely are going to put together.
First: language. In a country as ethnically-polarised as Kenya, language takes on extra meaning when dealing with customers. It is therefore important to begin the email usage policy with clear guidelines as to what languages are acceptable for email usage by employees. English is typically assumed to be the main language of business communication in Kenya, but there will be many instances where corporate email is abused to convey political or other opinions within the company, in vernacular. This exposes the company to possible defamation and discrimination trouble should such emails leak out – as they always do. So – ensure the email policy states very clearly what languages can be used in composing emails on the corporate email network – such as, “The language of communication for all emails originating from the company will be standard British English.” This should also include pedantic little things like what form of spelling to use across the company, what fonts to use, whether to send emails as HTML or as Rich Text Format, or even plain text.
Email generally includes attachments – files prepared in various business software programs and then sent around for others’ consumption. Attachments can be a bit of a minefield for companies, because they are easy to modify and some might even be security threats because they can be used to hide malware. Where email attachments are used, it is important to ensure that the most benign form of document attachments is used – for example, convert all documents to Portable Document Format (PDF) before attaching them to any email, and configure the email server to reject any attachments that are not in PDF format.
From the day the first email was sent, grammar simply went downhill. And that’s the first don’t: Do not get into grammar copouts when composing emails. The email policy should mandate emails that are “composed using correct grammar” in the given language of communication within the business. The personalisation of email should generally be avoided other than for people you are intimately familiar with – the use of accusative pronouns of third parties like “she”, “he”, and the like sets the wrong tone in an email, because one is then discussing personalities instead of discussing issues. Do not abbreviate words in the email, and avoid smiley faces and similar social media affectations in corporate email – they just look smarmy.
Emails should be kept short and precise! Email is not conversation, it doesn’t have real-time feedback in the manner that ordinary conversation does. Business email should not be treated like a conversation, and must be kept short and sweet and to the point.
Avoid spamming – everyone knows someone that sends emails to a hundred people. If each of these recipients hits the “Reply To All” button, you suddenly have thousands of emails flooding mailboxes, and weighing down the email server. If there are many parties receiving an email and you need to reply to just one, do so!
Some things are best kept off email. Remember, email is permanent. Every single email you have ever sent can be recovered quite easily. Sending emails that are overly critical of individuals is not advisable, as they will be read over and over and the bad feelings will never go away for the target of the criticism. If a criticism needs to be made, it is best done in person: set up a short meeting or catch-up, then explain just what was not done correctly and how it should have been done. Do not take advantage of the lack of face-to-face contact that email provides to say things that cannot usually be said in person.
Checking email should not get in the way of normal work. Pausing work to check email can be a huge momentum-killer, and reduces productivity drastically. Ideally, the average employee should check their email at most once every two hours or so, allowing time to focus on work and not mailbox refreshes.
Corporate email is not the place for feelings, so edgy emails, sarcasm, humour and the like should be kept to personal conversations. If one receives an angry email, one should resist the temptation to take the bait and hit back with an angrier response, as this simply escalates email grenade wars.
Do have a simple but fully informative email signature at the end of every email, to make it clear who wrote – and therefore assumes responsibility for – the content of the email.
Finally, corporate emails will always end up in the wrong hands. It is therefore vital to have a disclaimer at the end of the email body, advising recipients of their responsibility when they receive an email message from your organisation, and what to do if they realise it has nothing to do with them. This gives the corporate legal cover in cases of inappropriate usage of emails by external parties.
