Mission: Email Elimination

Voices against the compulsive need to check emails every few minutes, that now extends even beyond office hours, may not be strong enough as yet but are beginning to be heard in a few quarters. Email on mobile, which has taken the compulsiveness to a different level altogether, has only served to push the cause of the brigade against email closer to the edge. Is email dying a slow death at the hands of growing awareness towards its adverse impact on health and overall wellbeing?

While it could be some decades before we see elimination of emails, or most likely we may not see that day at all, a few enterprising organisations are trying to break the shackles from what seems as natural as the food we eat and the air we breathe, i.e. email. And, in doing so they are braving a whole new revolution that is trying to undo a past revolution. Here we present to you one such example. This effort may or may not come to anything, but it does deeply expose what many an enterprise secretly wishes – kill the email.

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In 2011 Atos SA (formerly Atos Origin) publicly announced to phase out internal emails by 2014. As per media reports, what brought about this extreme step was the company’s internal initiative, ‘Wellbeing At Work’- a knowledge network made up of new talents in the company.

According to Thierry Breton, CEO- Atos SA, the group noted in its observations that the young people joining the organisation after passing out from the universities were not using email but other social networking tools.

Breton himself harboured this feeling that employees were wasting unnecessary time on internal emails. He says in a press release issued by the company, “The volume of emails we send and receive is unsustainable for business. Managers spend between five and 20 hours a week reading and writing emails. They are already using social media networking more than search, and spend 25 percent of their time searching for information.” At Atos Origin, for example, they have set up collaboration tools and social community platforms, to share and keep track of ideas on subjects from innovation and Lean Management through to sales. “Businesses need to do more of this - email is on the way out as the best way to run a company and do business,” he adds further.

To get a deeper understanding of the company’s mission to eliminate internal email, Biztech2.com spoke to Robert Shaw, Global Program Director, Atos SA, the executive heading the ‘Zero Email Programme’.

Shaw took over responsibility of the programme in January 2012, According to Shaw, the zero email initiative came from two factors - the first factor was a positive element around focusing on the technology usage trends of the new generation of employees, and the second being the fatigue factor.

The positive element revolves around the focus on the new generation of entry level employees from universities and graduate schools. It was observed that their method of communication is very different from the generation of managers recruiting them. With the prevalence of social networks, new generation of employees multi-task and productively use social networks, which suggests their intuitive understanding of connectivity and of community interaction. “We wanted to learn from this trend and bring it into the workplace. It was really a positive reflection. It’s about giving the new generation of employees the work environment that suits the current state of technology available in a wider market place,” says Shaw.

Secondly, on the fatigue factor, Shaw feels that email has outlived its usefulness and is being misused within businesses, and for too many things.

Excessive Email Access: Beyond Limits

Atos has identified five areas where email is used beyond limit. Shaw delves deeper into these areas, the issues associated with them, and their alternatives available in the market.

Record Keeping: Email is used for record keeping, information flows of communication, stored sometimes as personal archives using Outlook and other tools. Over a period of time it becomes a personal repository, something employees become reliant on over the years. As an alternative there are many content management tools available in the market.

Document Production: This is a real source of frustration. For instance, in the sales department there are proposals and sales documentation being exchanged multiple times among multiple people. Keeping track of multiple versions of these documents and co-creating them on an asynchronous method of communication like email is a burdensome task. The difficulty is to communicate in a one–to-many and many-to-many environment. “Thus, what we are looking for is a better collaboration tool,” explains Shaw.

Chat On Email: This is very intrusive and clogs up the inboxes, and more often misses the intended value of the conversation. There are much better instant messenger or office communication chat tools available. Atos is looking to move from the ‘Chat On Email’ mode to IM tools, and definitely more face to face communication.

Instructions On Email: Department Heads often send out emails asking team members to perform tasks. They might be asking a specific person or a team. A more appropriate way of doing this can be having regular meetings. “The prevalence of email being used in command and control mode is again something that we are looking to address,” explains Shaw.

Regular Updates: Sharing of information or updating people on interesting articles and ideas need not necessarily be carried out on email. Social networks are much better in indicating social preferences and relaying to people about what’s going on.

Atos is looking for siloed products available in the market to address these requirements. Next generation tools, better known as enterprise social networks, are right for the business workplace.

India Decisive To The Success Of The Programme

India represents roughly 8,000 employees out of Atos’ total workforce of 74,000, and is a very significant geography and business unit for the company. The team in India provides services for the entire Atos group across the globe, and hence, it’s a very important business unit in the context of Atos as a whole. The business processes within Atos are also run through India.

“What I am talking about with our business leaders in India is how to ensure those business processes are optimised to eliminate email, and I have seen the commitment from the executives and business leaders here,” informs Shaw.

Zero Email Programme: Progress On Ground

Shaw rates the progress to be ‘very good’ in terms of establishing the programme within the company. While the company is still too early in its journey and there is still a long way to go, certain important decisions have been taken.

Shaw informs that the company has selected two technology tools with full criteria analysis. The release of the software will incorporate many, if not all, of the siloed alternatives to email. This is the enterprise social networking component of the programme.

A key observation to note here is the fact that despite all the frustrations, you need to first have an alternative in place that can effectively replace email before even trying to go down the email elimination path. With email deep-rooted into our professional as well as personal lives this mission is easier said than accomplished. And, for those enterprises that have set their heart to it what’s absolutely critical is to stop a while and ponder that they are doing it for the right reasons and not just to identify themselves as a disruptive force to stand out among the masses whose life to an extent depends on email.