
UK company is shutting down email for a week as an experiment - doh
http://emailepidemic.yolkrecruitment.com
======
Wintamute
Speaking as somewhat of an introvert I find having to conduct a real-time
telephone conversation hugely more disrupting to my "coding flow" than reading
or responding to email/IM/IRC. Perhaps this no-email idea works in an office
where part of people's job is to be sort of extrovert (i.e. recruitment
agents), but in an office with (dare I say it) a more cerebral atmosphere I
can't see it going down well. It sounds like the pet project of some extrovert
management person, and because they instinctively place huge value on real-
time communication with fleshy mouth parts, and _their_ inbox is overflowing,
they think everyone else is in the same boat. Not convinced.

Besides, perhaps the most annoying thing a recruitment agency can ever do is
leave you a long rambling answer phone message with their phone number at the
end. You end up having to listen to the damn thing multiple times to copy down
the number and phone them back at your expense. Just email me, I'll get right
back to you if I'm interested.

~~~
untog
_Speaking as somewhat of an introvert I find having to conduct a real-time
telephone conversation hugely more disrupting to my "coding flow" than reading
or responding to email/IM/IRC._

Sure. But this is an opportunity to further optimise office workflow. Given
how disruptive face to face meetings and telephone calls are, why not get them
all done in the first two hours of the workday? Then you can head to your desk
and work totally uninterrupted. With e-mail interruption I'm constantly in and
out of the zone.

 _It sounds like the pet project of some extrovert management person [...] Not
convinced._

I'm not convinced either, but that passage just makes you sound like "some
introvert coder person". There isn't a "right" answer to this- you and the
imagined extrovert have a difference of opinion, but labeling yourself as more
"cerebral" doesn't mean you are right. Loud, extroverted co-workers who get in
your space are annoying. So are introverted programmers that spend all day
with earphones in refusing to engage with the team around them.

~~~
Wintamute
If I'm sounding like I'm some introvert coder person it's because I am.
Introversion doesn't have to mean that you wear headphones and refuse to
engage with anybody, it can just mean that direct human interaction takes up
more of your concentration. I'm not sure what I wrote that made you think I
thought there was a "right" answer? It seems obvious from both our comments
that neither of us think this so I guess something in my tone/wording rubbed
you up the wrong way, so for that I apologise. I was attempting to communicate
that any high-handed company wide commands are unlikely to fit with everyone's
personal foibles. At the end of the day I think a relaxed culture of mutual
consideration of our colleagues working practices is the way to go.

------
chrislomax
Brilliant if you can do this, our company could never enforce this. Email is
the last line in defence in a "he said, she said" situation where we need
proof of changes in a project.

Picking up the phone is great and making notes but notes are not proof that
something has changed. I ask all clients to confirm a phone conversation in
email

~~~
jschuur
This is dead on. It's not just a defense when someone changes their mind later
on, it's an action item summary that clarifies what was actually agreed upon
vs. what you were just thinking out loud about.

Every conversation is a mix of 'what if we did this...' and 'right, let's do
this first then...'. An email makes it crystal clear for people after a call.

------
Joeboy
I'm not crazy about a campaign against one of the remaining bulwarks against
an increasingly oligopolistic internet.

~~~
eksith
You mean one of the least confrontational bulwarks.

They do have a point that email does afford a bit of anonymity (I think the
operative word should be "buffer" though), but in terms of spam, the walled
gardens are still a little behind in that aspect.

I'm not sure their approach is really any better. If anything Skype may be a
more appropriate substitute. During my time as a CS agent, I found that people
are less likely to be an ass when they're faced with a human being than a
script-reading voice.

------
xradionut
I like email. But then again I've had email in some sort since the mid '80s
and know how to use it as a tool. I don't do any instant messaging nor
normally answer the office phone during work hours, it's too distracting. Very
few things need immediate attention, filters and other means allow me to
choose those.

------
arbuge
That's 20 useful emails a week their employees won't be receiving. I look
forward to a world where I'm competing with companies that don't allow their
employees to use email :-)

------
robin_reala
The article mentions Yammer: we’ve had good success with both that and
Campfire as a way for increasing internal communication but keeping it ambient
rather than directed.

------
keithpeter
Good marketing for them.

I get about 100 emails a week at my work address. 80 of those are _internal_ ,
and about 30 of those internal messages are 'all staff'. I just set a filter
to dump those into a folder and empty it now and again.

The external emails are usually from students asking questions or warning of
absence &c. I keep those long enough to log the reason and to reply.

The 50 or so 'real' internal messages seldom go to three messages. If I did
not reply to those by email, I'd have to reply on paper memo forms.

Teaching is basically face2face. The admin goes on email.

~~~
koralatov
I wish I just got about 100 emails a week; I'm about twice that on average.
Some of that is unavoidable -- I deal with our US office a lot, so email is
often easier because it's asynchronous.

What really upsets me is when people sitting in the same open-plan as me will
_email things to me_ rather than handing them to me, or turning and saying,
``Could you please take a look at this?''

Where I work now, and a couple places I've worked in the past, email have
become the go-to `solution' to the `problem' of covering your arse. Almost
_nobody_ will do anything now without first getting an email instructing them
to do so -- even if it's already been discussed at length. They `need' it so
they have a paper-trail in case something goes belly-up.

These problems are more cultural than technological, but email has really
enabled them to flourish in a way that paper memos didn't.

~~~
keithpeter
" _They `need' it so they have a paper-trail in case something goes belly-up._
"

We had that before email. It used to be handwritten memos on three part
carbonised sets, original and yellow copy were sent and the blue one kept, the
other person wrote their reply underneath and then kept the yellow one. I wish
I had kept a few of those forms - the Internet seems not to know them...

What I'm saying is that it is all down to the organisational culture. Any
technology will be used in a way that conforms to the culture!

------
Colliwinks
Atos Origin announced abandoning internal emails a couple of years ago:
[http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news/atos-orgin-to-
abandon-i...](http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news/atos-orgin-to-abandon-
internal-email-49791)

At a quick glance, couldn't find anything more up to date about their
progress.

------
ljoshua
Interesting proposition, but too blanket of a policy to be a long-term
solution.

Email is the biggest problem to those who not only receive large amounts
(100+) but also have to spend large amounts of time coordinating responses to
those emails (it is not quantity of email received, but complexity of replies
that drives email overload). Shutting it off to everyone removes a valuable
communication channel that, while often abused, is important in the workplace.

One of the best things a company could actually do IMO if they wanted to
mandate an experiment, is to have everyone chunk their email checking and
responding times. Studies have shown doing so, checking for example 6 times a
day, _greatly_ reduces context-switching losses and reduces time taken to
complete primary tasks.

------
jkaljundi
A related area is focusing on key objectives and tasks each day. Some of our
<https://weekdone.com/> weekly planning & status reporting service users have
allow people to list 3-5 key goals per week and do things only if they match
those 3-5 goals. Having tried that myself with our team as well, it's hard as
hell. You always end up doing something from your 20-50 small todo list items,
not the 5 big things.

------
7952
Email is just a stream of information. It can be badly managed and annoying or
well managed and useful. The one massive advantage over a random social
network is that absolutely everyone has it and can use it. It neatly sidesteps
all the authentication/sign up/access problems which make other services
difficult to use between large organisations. It may sometimes fail as an app,
but it is hugely successful and useful as a protocol.

------
sarhus
it is hard to believe a recruitment agency can stop emails.

~~~
kvprashant
I think they did not mean to stop using emails in the sense of not using it at
all. It is more about making it efficient. Check out the part where they
suggest '3 and no more'. Imagine going in endless email loops like Inception
:)

~~~
JonYolk
That's our intention exactly. No-one receives training on how to use correctly
use emails which is why we're doing this to encourage our staff to be a lot
more aware of what they are doing.

~~~
kvprashant
I love the way that it has 0 training in-built. There's no need to get
training for not doing something; only know that you don't need to do it :)

------
wereHamster
I don't get why people suggest the use of EOM and NTTR (btw, why is it not
spelled NNTR? That would be far more logical to me. anyways..). If there is a
clear sign that the sender wants me to reply (such as a question, or a request
for feedback etc) then I reply. Otherwise I read the email and archive it. I
guess what I mean is, EOM/NTTR should be obvious from the content.

~~~
koralatov
NNTR (or something similar) can be pretty useful: a lot of people send long,
rambling emails that don't clearly state what they want. In cases like that,
`NNTR' or `Just FYI' can be a God-send.

I also like the idea of a checklist at the top of emails, as suggested in
Inbox Zero[1]:

    
    
      This email is:    [ ] actionable   [x] fyi        [ ] social
      Response needed:  [ ] yes          [x] up to you  [ ] no 
      Time-sensitive:   [ ] immediate    [ ] soon       [x] none
    

I've never actually used them myself, but they seem like a great idea if you
could avoid getting lynched for using them. I don't think they would go down
particularly well in a lot of offices. (I also dislike the wording used, but
that's a nit-pick more than a valid criticism.)

EOM is pretty superfluous, though -- it's clear from the fact that there's no
more text that I've reached the end of the message.

[1]: [http://www.43folders.com/2005/09/19/writing-sensible-
email-m...](http://www.43folders.com/2005/09/19/writing-sensible-email-
messages)

~~~
roel_v
"EOM is pretty superfluous, though -- it's clear from the fact that there's no
more text that I've reached the end of the message."

Originally the idea was to put EOM at the end of the subject line when the
whole message fit in the subject. That way you didn't have to 'open' the
email. Never made much sense to me, since the process of 'opening' an email
doesn't cost more than the effort to select the subject, but maybe it depends
on the email client - I can see how one on a 800x600 screen may use an email
client that shows the message list in one screen, and the body in another.

~~~
jbester
Sounds similar to NT (No Text) on usenet...

------
ollysb
Cue swapping of personal email addresses... Most people can't be available on
their phone all the time, meetings etc. A large part of email's popularity is
that you can communicate with people without having to both be available at
the same time. The only other option is to leave lots of voicemails and that's
way more inefficient than email.

------
drucken
This article does not sound like an "experiment". It seems to describe a
zealous manifesto against email.

Also, the core business of Yolk Recruitment _is_ literally people. So, there
is an inherent value bias for them to use the most direct and immediate forms
of communications as often as possible.

~~~
gaius
"OK, I'll email you my CV"

"Err, you can't"

------
kvprashant
This is brilliant. I volunteer for IEEE and am presently Chairing a conference
to be held in July. Sometimes our email loop keep going. I am going to follow
this for the volunteer group!

------
nextw33k
Another attempt at throwing the bath water out with the baby.

If people are not using email correctly, try training them! Email is more than
just a create and a reply button.

~~~
JonYolk
We are training you've just got sometimes start new

