I have always been a little curious about how people manage their email inboxes. After observing and discussing email management with coworkers and friends, I realized that it may be possible to understand a person’s level of engagement by seeing how they manage their email. In previous posts, we discussed Gallup’s State of the American Workplace Survey1, where 70% of all employees are either “Not Engaged” (52%) or “Actively Disengaged” (18%) and only 30% are “Engaged.” We have also looked various ways to Tame Your Inbox (part 1, part 2). Let’s bring these topics together and see how each group manages its inbox.
The Not Engaged group skims their inbox and focuses on those emails that are the easiest and quickest to handle. They ignore emails that are not readily identifiable as needing action and wait for someone such as their manager or a coworker to bring important information to their attention.
The Actively Disengaged employees are more concerned with personal emails than with work emails. Work emails are seen as a nuisance so they delete them or create rules to automatically send emails to trash. In essence, they “unsubscribe” from the company.
Engaged employees manage their email so that they have time to complete their work. They schedule times during the day to focus on their email. They leverage email rules to move useful yet unimportant information into files for later review. They also use rules to identify important emails so that they can be read and acted upon more quickly.
What are your thoughts about the commonalities between the level of employee engagement and email management? What are some other ways to determine an employee’s level of engagement?
1 Gallup, Inc. “State of the American Workforce: Employee Engagement Insights for U.S. Business Leaders.” Survey. 2013.
“Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net”
P.S. – First time here? Welcome to the Agent In Engagement site. Thanks for taking the time to stop by! I hope you’ll explore the rest of the site. Let me know what employee engagement topics interest you.
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Let’s Get Engaged!
I’m Agent in Engagement Simpson…Greg Simpson.
My mission? To help companies succeed by focusing on how they engage, manage, and develop their employees.
My credentials? Award winning engagement work with Fortune 150 companies.
My next assignment? To come in from the field, the consulting field, and return to headquarters. There I’ll lead the ongoing battle against the greatest nemesis in every company – employee disengagement.
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You can follow me @agtinengagement, email me at g…@a…t.com or learn more about me at www.gregoryfsimpson.com.
