What expectations do you have of your team members when it comes to email responsiveness?
Our reader poll today asks: What expectations do you have of your team members when it comes to email responsiveness?
- I expect a response only during working hours: 51%
- I expect a response to all emails within a few hours of it being sent: 6%
- I expect responses on urgent items immediately and others during normal hours: 43%
Reasonable expectations? While many respondents only expect a response during working hours, 43% expected responses to “urgent” items immediately even outside working hours. The real question here is what constitutes “urgent” because we all have different definitions. I challenge you to assess your view of urgent. Does that proposal really have to go out that night? Is the client really going to read it over dinner? Or can it wait until morning? Do you really need that report with the latest production numbers at 10 p.m.? Are you going to act on them that night or is it just curiosity that has you asking. “Urgency” is a slippery slope that leads us to be emailing at all hours of the day and night. Challenge the definition of urgent if you want some of that madness to stop. And if you expect an email at all hours regardless of work hours or not, I hate to break it to you but your team probably hates you.
Do you agree with these poll results? Let us know in the comments below!
– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC
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These results were originally a SmartPulse poll in SmartBrief on Leadership which tracks feedback from more than 240,000 business leaders. Get smarter on leadership and sign up for the SmartBrief on Leadership e-newsletter.
Wow Mike, you certainly hit a nerve with that message. I actively push back on the blizzard of emails, most marked urgent, that I receive every day – and the huge majority are because of lack of planning on that individuals part, not myself. And yes, there are people in the ranks above that expect you to respond at any time of the day or night.
The other major reason for the blizzard of emails is people who don’t trust their co-workers copying the message to anyone even remotely related to the topic to Cover their A**.
I’ve adopted a different tactic to the spam-everyone approach. When I request something of someone and they agree to do it but then don’t deliver, we have a frank conversation (face-to-face if possible, otherwise by phone or Skype). I often find out that person is extremely over-committed because they are afraid to say the word “No”. If I get the sense that this person’s inbox is out of control, it is time to find someone else who isn’t – or use it as a learning opportunity to develop new skills.
And about those types who expect a response to an urgent email at all hours? The tagline to my email says it all: “if this matter is urgent, give me a call within normal business hours.” It is pretty amazing how so many “urgent” items suddenly change priorities when you don’t play the game.