10 Mistakes You’re Making In Work E-mails

10 mistakes you’re making in work emails

Just yesterday, HR Grapevine reported on The Duchess of Cambridge’s mum, Carole Middleton – who owns the celebratory supplies firm Party Pieces – who came under fire for allegedly ‘bombarding’ staff with 71 emails per day. This was deemed excessive, even for a busy working day, by disgruntled staff.

While emailing back and forth is a key part of any working environment – to help organise meetings and discuss pressing business matters – excessive email chains can severely damage employee engagement and productivity and destroy working relationships between colleagues.

With that in mind, HR Grapevine has collated the top ten reasons for colleagues ignoring your emails – and how to avoid being ghosted:

Failing to consider the recipient’s availability

Nothing is more irritating than receiving a ridiculously wordy email when you’re already strapped for time. Particularly if a 65-page document is attached and awaiting imminent feedback from its sender. This is a common reason why individuals are inclined to ignore emails from colleagues. It might be worth checking with the recipient or pre-warning them before sending it to see if they have time to read through the essay-long business proposal.

Not making it obvious why you were invited to the ‘cc’ party

More often than not, colleagues tend to loop all departments in the office in an email thread when it’s nothing to do with them. This ‘just in case’ measure is annoying for colleagues who have absolutely no involvement in the discussion, but are bombarded by a raft of emails that are clogging up their inbox. So, be sure to just include the relevant people to prevent burning bridges.

The email was too long

Emailing colleagues takes up a long part of a person’s day. If individuals are time-strapped as it is, is it really necessary to send a long email if the recipient doesn’t have time to read it? Keep the content clean and concise to heighten the chances of your email being read.

The email content was vague

There may be a lot of words on the page, but it doesn’t explain why the email was sent and what the recipient needs to do on the back of it. Each email should have a purpose and warrant an action or a response from the recipient otherwise there is no point in pressing send.

It’s too short

While lengthy emails are annoying, there is nothing worse than an email that is too short. If workers adapt a text-type style to their email, colleagues may feel that it’s not important enough for them to reply. So, make sure that the email uses the connect formality and is drafted appropriately.

Workers receive too many emails per day

According to Tech.co, the average ‘business user’ receives just under 90 emails per day so it is likely that colleagues’ inboxes will get cluttered quite quickly. With that being the case, flagging the email as high importance (if necessary) and writing a catchy title will heighten the chances of the email getting noticed by the recipient.

The tone of the email sounded rude or blunt

As there is no face-to-face contact when communicating over email, it is easy to get off on the wrong foot. Particularly if an email has been quickly typed and sent without proofreading. Alternatively, if the nature of the email is negative, for example to flag an employee’s poor performance or to highlight a mistake, this may encourage colleagues to turn off their email notifications. So, the key message here is to try and adopt positive language that will engage recipients in what you are saying. This will make them more likely to read its content regardless of its positive or negative nature.

The recipient read the email and forgot to reply

It is quite normal for individuals to get distracted and forget to do something. So, there may be a completely innocent reason for being ghosted. Just send a follow-up email to remind them if you feel that it may have slipped their mind.

The recipient didn’t see how responding would be beneficial

Particularly if the email doesn’t concern the recipient, they may feel that there is no point in them replying. No one wants to waste their time replying to pointless emails so be sure that they are the right recipient before sending the email.

Replying will result in more than one email

Colleagues may feel that answering an email will generate a flurry of more emails. If the context of the email isn’t particularly important then colleagues may refrain from replying. It may just be easier to turn to your neighbour and ask them the question in person rather than creating a lengthy email thread.

Author : Sophie Parrott

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