Having heard an excellent discussion on how emails are now detracting from the efficiencies of business and how the Government are trialling “no email days” we at PayMatters thought that we might try the same.

A no email day means that you try and not send a colleague an email. Most of the time it will make you realise that an email is not necessary or may lead to you actually going to talk to your colleague instead.

The Independent summarise the benefits in their article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10395039/Civil-servants-to-abandon-time-thief-email-for-a-day.html

In some instances employees can take up to 20 hours a week just working through their inbox.

On the radio discussion it described how when Stephen Kelly, the Government’s Chief Operating Officer and a former Nasdaq executive trialled this at his previous business it lead to many employees meeting for the first time and these relationships then helped them work better together going forward.

There is nothing more demoralising than returning from your lunch or worse your holiday to find 100’s of emails that need reading. Normally 90% or more are just immediately deleted but this action takes time.

Imagine when you send an email to all your staff. If there are 60 recipients and each takes 20 seconds to read it then 20 minutes work has been lost. If this is repeated a number of times during the day then hours can be lost in minutes.

Another interesting concept was Volkswagen that stopped its servers sending work emails after 6.15pm as it was disrupting its employees home lives. I’m sure we’ve all had this distraction!

We will be sure to let you know our findings.

Miles Grady BA (Econ) Hons ACA

Director

PayMatters Umbrella Company and PayMatters Accountancy Services LLP