SERRC.net Online Community for Alaskan Educators and SERRC Staff

For better or worse, email has become a primary medium of communication in todays workplace. Your skill with your inbox directly correlates to
your efficiency. I'm oftened reminded how "new" email is to some people, even the Gen Ys, even with "techies". Even in the year 2008. Email in the workplace is not like the narrative one-sided letters you send home from camp. It is small bites, iterative, concise. Efficiency with email doesn't mean spending a lot of time with your inbox, in fact it means the opposite: spending as little time as necessary, so you can get on with your real work. This post outlines a few basics to make your experience with email a success.

1) Use the Subject Line

By all means do not leave the subject of an email blank and don't set it to "Ryan", even if you're sending to a shared mailbox. Make the subject something descriptive about the content, so that
you and your recipient know what the email pertains to. People who
ignore the subject line tend to get their emails ignored.

2) Be a Smart CC'er

Nothing ruins a good email thread more than improper CC'ing. Combined with #3, this practice can create mass-confusion and kill an otherwise productive email thread dead in its tracks. Take care to
understand the perspective of those you are CC'ing, and especially those of the person who sent the original email. Typically a thread should remain addressed to the recipients listed by the originator. If you're not the originator, and you're adding CC's, then beware this can often be perceived negatively. Remember the adage: it's not the number of cooks in the kitchen, it's the right cooks.

Many times people want to CC their manager as an FYI on a project or to give some bit of information. This often gives the supervisor the wrong impression that they need to manage something. Instead of CC'ing on the "working" thread, in this case the proper course is to send the email to the designated recipients, then go into your Sent Items and forward the message to your manager, with an FYI at the top of the body.

3) Point text at People, not Clouds

Often people don't look at the list of recipients on an email before reading it, and naturally assume that the text is pointed at them. In addition to #2, always make sure to address people in the body of the email, so that everyone can clearly see who is being asked what. Don't ask questions of a group unless you don't care to get definitive answers.

4) Email is Not a Collaboration Tool

If you want to exchange bits of information, email is great. If you
want to collaborate with a team, on a project, use the proper medium. Email
threads can get too long and with all the replies "inline" and
possibility for folks to get left off the CC, it's just not right for effective collaboration. Further, email is stuck in people's inboxes, so they can't necessarily be shared with staff brought into the project after the emails have been sent.
Instead, use something like Google Docs, and online discussion forum or blog, or a shared folder on the
network for asynchronous collaboration.

5) Use Numerical Bullet Lists

If you're asking questions and you want to get only partial answers,
then by all means, put them all in one big clumpy paragraph. If you
want people to respond to each of your questions, put them in a
numerical list with space between each question. That way people can
either reply inline, or they can just answer the questions, using the
numbers as references. The same goes for answering questions in email,
if someone has taken the time to bullet out their questions, then
answer each of them.

6) And Speaking of Questions

Make sure to be realistic. Don't be open-ended. If you give a list
of questions, people need to be able to reply to each with either
"yes", "no", a selection of options, or a short sentence or phrase. A good way to proofread your questions is to imagine you are the recipient. If
a question in your list requires the recipient to do a lot of work to
answer, then it should be it's own email with its own subject line.

7) Don't Hijack Threads

Thread hijacking is where you reply to an existing email thread, with an existing subject, with
a group of CC'ers already on it, with your own new question. This is about the same
thing as going up to a group of people at a party who are in the middle of a conversation
about politics, interupting, and asking them about lastnight's baseball game.
Instead, start a new thread with a proper subject line.

8) Remember to Reply-All, or Not

Generally, if you're replying to an email with multiple people on the CC, you should remember to reply-all. Not doing so will create fractured threads that lead to chaos and lost information. On the other-hand, make sure to be aware of who your email is going to. Many email programs will reply-all by default, so be careful not to send something to everyone that was intended just for someone.

9) Saving Drafts, Carefully

Often email becomes the place where we get our opinions out in a concise and organized manner. Face to face meetings don't let people gather their thoughts and list their points, they are wraught with interuptions, and (for some) performance anxiety. When you're composing that email full of sensitive material, and saving and re-editing the draft, remove all recipients from any To or CC field, just to erase any possibility of the dreaded accidental premature sending of an unfinished email. Once it's ready to send, you can add the recipient(s) back in.