Thierry Breton, CEO of Atos (one of Europe’s largest information technology services companies), is going to ban his staff from sending each other emails. He said it’s a waste of time and outdated form of communication. Apparently he wants this new “zero email” policy to be in place within as early as 18 months! He argues that only 10% of the 200 average emails his employees get each day turn out to be useful. Instead of email he’s pushing for instant messaging and Facebook style communications (status updates, notifications, etc).
Could your company survive without email? When I look at my email I see a lot of the following items:
- Corporate news notifications
- Nags to do things I haven’t done yet (from various systems)
- FYI emails
What if we took all of our “notifications” and “nags” and plugged them into an employee Facebook-style “homepage” (along with some embedded experiences to handle the notification without leaving the homepage)? What if your travel approvals displayed on the homepage and when you hovered you saw the full request – and better yet you had the accept/reject links right there (handle without leaving the page). Might that be more efficient and make email more meaningful?
I think having a company sponsored no-email day to raise awareness of what email is useful for – and to experience how much more we might be able to get done would be very interesting! Wouldn’t you love starting the week with a no-email Monday? 🙂