I have become a bit aggravated of late by what I am terming as failures of email in the workplace.  I will admit that I am quite particular in my usage of email, and I have high expectations of my peers when it comes to their usage of email.  Below are some examples of what not to do when it comes to email in the workplace.

• Using Germane Subjects

• In the hurried (and harried) workplaces we are all in, the ability to read the subject line of an email and obtain a sense of what is being asked is very important.  The use of mobile devices like BlackBerries and iPhones have made this even more vital.  One should be able to glance at an email’s subject line and get a good idea of the email’s content.  Unfortunately, I receive a large number of emails whose subject has little or nothing to do with its contents.  The use of these devices, though, has increased the likelihood of the email subject being irrelevant to content.  Additionally, with the volume of email ever increasing, email needs to have a relevant and eye-catching subject.  One way to ensure your email will annoy me, send me an email asking a question completely unrelated to the subject.  This transgression is almost as bad as composing your entire email in the subject.

• One of the responsibilities of my group is communication of upcoming change—planned or emergency.  Unfortunately, one of the common pitfalls of this is the potential for replies to be sent to recipients who have no need to receive them.  One of the ways we have worked-around this is to send emails as a distribution list, and the emails are sent to a secured distribution list—only allowed users can send mail to that list.  While this works quite well as a “barrier to entry,” there are still some times where users will reply to everyone on a thread.  A recent example of this revolved around a planned maintenance reminder sent last Friday morning.  Later that afternoon, a recipient of this reminder sent an email replying to all asking if there was a system issue.  There was no issue, and the user was informed of that off-list while at the same time informing them that they inadvertently spammed a distribution list with a question about a system not related to the earlier notification.  Of course, we were down the rabbit hole, as other replies came in.  I will not argue the point that there is value to using the “Reply to All” button, but sometimes, think before using the “Reply to All” button.  I, and others, may just thank you. 

While these transgressions may irk me to no end, I am fairly confident I am not the only person who does not suffer them lightly.  So, please, think before you use email.