Email can be a wonderful tool, if used properly. You likely use email as a communication channel in the workplace even more now that more employees are working remotely, but it’s important to consider its limitations and not overload your employees’ inboxes. Email is typically a form of one-way communication—meaning it does not allow for an immediate exchange of ideas like calls, in-person, or online virtual meetings do. Aside from using email as a logistics and project coordination tool, it’s best used as follow-up to meetings to recap concepts, agreements and gain alignment between groups.
As with all communications, emails must be planned and considered to get the action you want. Estimates show that there will be 319.6 billion emails sent and received globally each day in 2021. If we’re using it more frequently, we may as well be better at it.