The Debate Over E-mail

Is e-mail an effective form of communication? Or has it outlived its usefulness? An interesting piece by Kristin Samuelson of the Chicago Tribune posed these questions of local business executives recently.

The discussion was triggered by an announcement from French technology giant Atos (74,000 employees in 42 countries) that the use of e-mail will be phased out over the next 18 months.  Why? According to Atos CEO Thierry Breton, only 10 percent of the 200 messages employees receive on an average day are useful, and  18 percent are spam. Managers spend between five and 20 hours a week reading and writing emails, he said. 

 “If people want to talk to me, they can come and visit me, call or send me a text message,” Breton told the Wall St. Journal.

Instead of using emails, Atos employees will communicate via face-to-face communication, instant messaging or texting.

Such real-time workplace communication tools will surpass e-mail  in popularity within five years, according to 54% of CIOs surveyed by Robert Half Technology in August. And a recent study found that 95 percent of Americans aged 18 to 24 send or receive an average of 110 texts per day.

What’s scariest  is the ominous implication that texting will cause the extinction of emailing when the 18-24 group become middle and top managers in organizations. How will the emergence of these new technologies affect the function of e-mail in internal corporate communications?

Like many, I have been frustrated by today’s chief threats to email: spam and the ubiquitous use of smartphones which limit messages to cryptic, texting-like posts.  Like many, my temperature rises to a boil when people hide behind an email when the situation cries out for face-to-face communication.  

However, I find email an invaluable communication method and would be severely impaired if its use diminishes further.  I use it all the time to respond to clients’ requests for information, to share a single question or announcement with organized groups, to follow up and summarize the status of projects, events, issues, or to serve as a written record of a two-way, real-time conversation – a form of communication that is seemingly becoming a relic of the past.

I dread the thought of a future where face-to-face communications go the way of the ice truck.  So do the experts Kristin Samuelson consulted:

“Just as Mark Twain said ‘the report of my death was an exaggeration,’ so the report of the death of e-mail is an exaggeration,” local consultant David Grossman told the Tribune. “Often with e-mail, people think they get the information out and the communication is done.  That’s not the case.  Sending an e-mail is just the beginning.”

Atos CEO Breton agrees. “Emails cannot replace the spoken word.”

I pray he’s right.