Workplace Bans Email

from the missing-the-point... dept

The CEO of Phones 4u (a UK-based phone retailer), a man who is apparently quite wealthy - but who doesn't use email, has apparently decided that emails are bad and has banned employees from emailing each other. He estimates that this is going to save his staff three hours a day, and will save the company £1 million a month. This is going a bit further than the Liverpool City Council which recently started experimenting with banning internal emails on Wednesdays. However, I think the guy is being a bit delusional here. He seems to assume that email is only used for bad reasons - and is throwing out quite a big baby with a little bit of bath water. Besides, it's unclear how he got the "three hours" number - and whether or not he realizes that those three hours are now going to be spent trying to track down the person you can no longer email (or, simply moved over to instant messaging). There's no denying that sometimes email communications get bogged down - but for many things it is much more efficient. What's important is not completely banning one form of communication, but training employees on what the proper communications channel is for various tasks.

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