InformationWeek

Fighting E-Mail Glut

Ignored any e-mail lately? More and more, you're in good company.

By Stephanie Stahl
Issue date: Oct. 30, 1995

While electronic mail has become a pervasive, mission-critical network application for many companies, E-mail overuse and abuse is increasingly common. Many executives, facing "cc: hell" or an E-mailbox overflowing with pointless or unnecessary memos, are fighting back. Some simply leave the messages unread and eventually delete them. Others have secretaries filter their E-mail messages, print out the important ones, and trash the others.

A few companies hav e come up with more innovative approaches. Software supplier Computer Associates in Islandia, N.Y., shuts down the entire corporate E-mail network every day from either 10 a.m. to noon or 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. "We encourage people to spend those hours doing other things," says Marc Sokol, VP of product strategy. Sokol himself prefers to read his E-mail in the evening. "If you don't control it, it will control you," he says.

Charles Wang, Computer Associates' CEO and architect of the company's E-mail downtime policy, has gone a step further: He deleted his E-mail address from the company's mail system. "He was getting [too many] 'cover your ass' memos," says Sokol. "If you want to meet with him, you can go to his office or give him a call."

Pharmaceuticals giant SmithKline Beecham, which has about 25,000 E-mail users, has launched several initiatives to encourage responsible use of E-mail. The most dramatic one, implemented this year, charges business units E-mail fees based on the number of message charact ers each unit's employees send. To encourage accountability, line managers who notice excessive charges for their group's E-mail use can request a detailed account of all E-mail transactions to find out who's sending messages to whom.

The concept has worked. "We noticed a dramatic falloff in the total number of messages," says Steve Mahaney, manager of electronic messaging at the Philadelphia company. "People still send attachments and documents, but the 'cc-ing' and the 'reply to all' have dropped off."

Another SmithKline initiative is a companywide education program that provides tips and techniques on how to use E-mail more effectively. For example, one tip is to make selective use of the cc: and reply functions, says Mahaney. That may seem like common sense, but for all too many folks, it's anything but.

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