A new study has suggested that the average UK employee loses eight hours and 42 minutes per week to drafting emails.
Research by Slack surveyed over 8,000 respondents, and among the other findings was that workers are drafting 99 emails every week on average, but two in five employees admit they wouldn’t bother reading an email longer than eight sentences. Another key data point was that the average employee deletes or ignores six emails daily based on the subject line.
Slack stated that this reflects the scale of outdated communication methods in UK businesses and its impact on productivity for important work.
Deirdre Byrne, Head of UK and Ireland at Slack, commented:
Email is the cockroach of the internet — it simply won’t die. Yet when it comes to business communication, the research reveals this 50-year-old tech isn’t fit for purpose. Employees at small businesses are losing a working day each week to drafting emails — which often go unread — at the expense of productive work."
Slack also found that over one quarter of workers (27 percent) believe email is an "outdated form of communication" and a majority (55 percent) state it’s easy to misconstrue tone. Just under half (48 percent) said they miss emails due to spam or junk folders, and 44 percent admitted that their inboxes are full of irrelevant emails.
"It's up to leaders to embrace technology that helps streamline communication and knowledge sharing, accelerates work with AI and automation, and keeps everyone engaged and focused on more meaningful and impactful work," Byrne added. "Email may never fully go away, but if we can get beyond the tyranny of the inbox, we can make a massive difference to work today."
