Tech Firm Implements ‘Zero Email’ Policy
Atos, a tech company, has just banned internal email by decree of CEO Thierry Breton:
CEO Thierry Breton of the French information technology company said only 10 percent of the 200 messages employees receive per day are useful and 18 percent is spam. That’s why he hopes the company can eradicate internal emails in 18 months, forcing the company’s 74,000 employees to communicate with each other via instant messaging and a Facebook-style interface.
Caroline Crouch, a spokeswoman for the company, told ABC News the goal is focused on internal emails rather than external emails with clients and partners. Atos has already reduced the number of internal emails by 20 percent in six months.
Bravo. Email has gone from useful tool to a lazy anti-productivity platform in many cases. Inside a company, there’s often little reason to use email. For 90% of email purposes, instant messaging (that offers file transfer) would suffice perfectly fine. And it would have the added benefit of time urgency: if you need that XML file from a developer, you can’t just fire it at him at 7 PM and let him get the message as he’s putting his kids to bed. If you need it, hit him up on IM or phone and get it. No time like the present, and no more email bombing colleagues at 11 PM because you can’t sleep.
Do this: seriously look at your inbox right now. Create a folder called TEST HOLD. Now, any email that isn’t urgent, file away in TEST HOLD and see if you miss them. The urgent ones stay in your inbox to process.
Sure, you might put something in TEST HOLD on accident, but give yourself a week: before you know it, you’ll be able to archive or delete most of what’s in TEST HOLD.
If you’re anything like me, you quickly realize 80% of your email is either FYI or useless to you in terms of something you need to do. And if that’s the case, there’s no reason for it to exist.
###
More links:
MIPRO Consulting main website.
MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.
