Everyone has content, but how well is it written?

An Information Mapping (IMI) survey shows that about 65% of the respondents spend from 1 to 3 hours per day reading and writing emails.

·         40% "waste" thirty minutes to three hours per day reading poorly written emails.

·         80% of respondents deem email writing skills as 'extremely' or 'very' important to their jobs.

Not surprisingly, the respondents don’t represent chicken little companies. Nearly 50% of the respondent companies had 5,000 or more employees or more. More than 80% of the respondents were management or had a “professional” function. Key jobs included:  

·         general management

·         operations

·         human resources & training

·         information technology

The study (Information Mapping Survey Reveals Email Writing Skills Vital to Job Effectiveness)identified the biggest email problems as:

• Disorganized content
• Missing critical information
• Unclear action or request
• Content is too wordy, long and difficult to read

"It is evident that organizations can greatly improve productivity and performance by helping employees write more effective email communications," said Deborah Kenny, IMI's Vice President and General Manager of Learning Solutions. "Email writing is a critical competency for today's business professionals, but too few email messages are organized clearly or effectively. Poorly written emails translate into substantial inefficiencies and costs that have a significant impact on an organization's bottom line."

The bottom line: poor content costs money. Employees should be trained how to write effective email and content on the intranet. Furthermore, there should be an effective use policy for e-mail which also dictates what belongs on e-mail and what belongs on the intranet.

Wiping-out 15 minutes of wasted employee time on average for each of your company’s 5,000+ employees would save or earn back millions of dollars in productivity gains.