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Snap – Internal Communications Solutions.
Hot Tips for Internal Communicators
Manage your emails and archive them effectively
Do you or your staff have overflowing Inboxes?
Have you or your staff ever failed to fully digest an important update or new information because your
inbox is just too full? If your organisation does not have clear guidelines for managing emails, you may
find that more and more staff have inboxes that are groaning under the weight of hundreds of emails.
This puts pressure on IT capacity, but there is a more sinister problem. Just think how much important
information is buried in each individual inbox. If an employee is absent (or worse still leaves), would
another person be able to access all the information required to fill in for them? Or would you lose vital
information or vital records?
It may be time to look at your email management policy. Radicati Group research in 2005 indicated that
a typical email user was responsible for managing and archiving an estimated 300MB of email received
on their desktop annually. The number of emails sent daily has doubled since 2002 (based on IDC
research) so the amount of email storage required by a user today is almost certainly going to be close to
500MB per year.
You could start with agreeing a folder structure, so that employees know where to save email and just as
importantly, where to find them. Agree on clear rules around which emails should be kept, how long
they should be kept, when and if they should be archived and which emails should be deleted once they
have been read. IT will be able to assist you with some statistics which will help staff understand why
some types of emails are not encouraged or even banned. You may also need to give some guidelines as
to acceptable email use. For example, should staff be able to send and receive non-work related emails?
One Auckland law firm allows each employee only three emails in their inbox at one time. The firm has
clear guidelines as to how their client’s emails are to be saved and where they should be saved. The
result is that clients can get a quick response to a question, even if their lawyer is away from the office.
Everyone deals quickly and effectively with their emails, and as a result are more productive.
One further tip is to ensure staff realise that email is not always the best communication channel.
Encourage staff to think about alternative and better ways of communicating.
Try these Snap tools
Part of your job in internal communications is to ensure your organisation complies with the Public
Records Act 2005. Snap’s ability to save and archive information could assist you here as Snap tools can
re-direct expired information to a central searchable repository.
Once you have developed clear email polices you could use Snap Poll and Snap Quiz and Snap
Screensavers to reinforce and test your staff’s knowledge and understanding of your organisation’s email
policies. These tools could also provide you with data to demonstrate the success of your drive to reduce
email overload.