Managing inboxes occupies much of UK workers' time

Contributed by Sacha Veillette (Wednesday, December 01, 2010) | Category : Email messaging trends

The productivity of workers in the UK is being hindered by the amount of time they spend managing their email inbox, according to a new survey from Star, an on-demand computing and communication services vendor.

Twenty percent of respondents to the 2010 Star Email Survey spend a total of 32 workdays per year on email management. The task occupies an hour per day for 19 percent of respondents and more than an hour for 20 percent, according to the report.

“Although email has been the mainstay of corporate communications for more than a decade, it’s clear that workers are increasingly overwhelmed with the volumes and want support with how to stay in control of their inboxes," Martino Corbelli, marketing director of Star, said.

Seventeen percent feel their days revolve solely around managing email and 14 percent feel there is so much that they are unable to deal with the problem effectively.

Broken down by age, 54 percent of workers over the age of 55 feel they are completely in control of their email. The figure drops to 41 percent for employees between the ages of 16 and 34.

But many of these employees may be helped with an email archiving solution and data retention policy, the report concludes. Fifty-seven percent of respondents said they have trouble retrieving an email that is three months old.

This may be because they fail to archive old messages. Forty-two percent of workers prefer to keep all messages in their inbox. Eleven percent have created folders to organize messages, but do not often use them. Just 6 percent of respondents have automated rules to store and archive emails.

"The issue of email management, and particularly email retrieval, is about more than just efficiency and productivity, or even managing stress levels. There are legal requirements stipulating not only the retention and protection of email but also requirements which oblige businesses to make email records available within a given timescale," Corbelli said.

The results of this survey reinforce the importance of proper email archiving solutions and policies. Properly storing emails and ensuring they can be retrieved quickly will assist a company in avoiding fines and sanctions that can be imposed during litigation.