Press release

Experts agree email overload can only be tackled by culture change

London » 06 Dec 2011 » Training Press Releases » Emailogic

Information overload - such as that experienced by UK workers - can only be tackled by a company wide solution, such as behavioural training, according to a senior Australian psychologist.

Information overload - such as that experienced by UK workers - can only be tackled by a company wide solution, such as behavioural training, according to a senior Australian psychologist.

The incidences of stress caused by too much information was now a major source of psychological illness in the workplace and is expected to become an increasing problem, unless tackled at a company level.

The modern day "multi-screen, multi-tasking" culture is a contributory factor to work related stress - which causes an average term of absence from work of 27 days per year*.

Some email experts advise that email only be checked at certain times during the day - such as twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon.
However, Dr Ben Searle - an Australian lecturer in psychology - says of email "These solutions won't work if your company doesn't embrace it. If a culture exists where a reply to an email is expected straight away, it will not work."
The whole culture of email use within companies should be addressed by managers and suitable training cascaded down to staff says Dr Searle.

The need for intervention from senior managers was also highlighted in a recent US workplace productivity study.

Marc Peter, Director of Technology for LexisNexis who commissioned the study agreed that cultural change was necessary if information overload was going to be tackled in any significant way.

Marc Powell, Director of email training consultants Emailogic agrees: "Our experience of delivering email training over the past 12 years shows that a critical mass of staff need to change their behaviour to achieve a culture change. Whilst email training delivered in 'pockets' is effective for those who receive it - this will not have a significant impact on the rest of the organisation. The majority needs to be trained".


*Work related stress alone accounted for 11.5 million "sick days" in the UK last year according to the HSE.

About Emailogic 
Emailogic has been established for 12 years and offers a suite of award winning training products that transform the way that staff use email delivering measured, sustainable productivity gains. 

Emailogic training is delivered in short engaging and interactive face to face or web based training interventions with content tailored to fit with all the email and communication issues specific to client organisations. 

Emailogic delivers consistent, measured, proven results including: 
- significant time savings 
- reduced email volume 
- improved communications.