Companies handle information overload with e-mail-free Fridays

12:13 AM CST on Friday, November 9, 2007
By JENNIFER CHAMBERLAIN / The Dallas Morning News
jchamberlain@dallasnews.com

First Fridays were casual. Now, at some offices, they’re e-mail free.

Advances in workplace technology have made it easier to communicate, but they’ve also led to a backlash against information overload. The concept of a day without e-mail first emerged in England about six years ago, when confectionary company Nestle Rowntree announced a Friday e-mail ban.

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Tell us: What do you think of e-mail free Fridays?
More recently, engineers at Intel in Santa Clara, Calif., announced a "Zero Email Friday" initiative. On Intel’s IT@Intel Blog, Nathan Zeldes explains that the idea isn’t to ban electronic correspondence but rather to encourage face-to-face interaction.

Dallas-Fort Worth companies are also taking measures to get a handle on information overload, though some say a day without e-mail isn’t a practical solution.

Commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield has started experimenting with e-mail-free Fridays in its Addison office. In addition to boosting productivity, the initiative has facilitated more interaction among the 100 or so employees who work on the same floor, said Brian Jensen, managing director of global communications.

"What that means for us is that any communication on that floor amongst your peers has to be done face-to-face or at least by telephone," he said. Employees are permitted to send e-mails to clients or people outside the office, or to send electronic documents if needed.

The company tries to make the initiative fun, posting signs around the office and designating "e-mail police" to enforce the rule, Mr. Jensen said. It’s been an "eye-opening" experience, he said, and reactions have been mixed, but positive overall.

"Some people are so chained to e-mail that it just really messes with their world if you attempt to throttle their e-mail," he said. "Other people are so put off by their e-mail world that they light up when you tell them about e-mail-free Friday."

For Nortel Networks, a day without e-mail isn’t practical, said Wes Durow, vice president, enterprise strategy and marketing. The Canadian company, with U.S. headquarters in Richardson, has about 33,000 employees and does business in 150 companies around the world.

"Each month there are about 34 million e-mail messages that transverse our e-mail network, and 34 million minutes of voice conversation," Mr. Durow said.

Nortel has adopted a unified communications system that ties together e-mail, voice mail, instant messaging, multimedia conferencing and other modes of communication into a centralized system. It enables an employee to see whether others on the system are available by phone, e-mail, etc., and choose the best way to interact with them, Mr. Durow said.

"Not only do you have presence, but you also have context," he said. "It’s not only about easing the burden of all these overwhelming communications, it’s about helping them interact within context and be more efficient. E-mail is not going to go away, but how we communicate is going to change radically over the next few years."

Nortel implemented its unified communications system about four years ago, and has realized about $20 million in savings since then, Mr. Durow said. Additionally, the system gives workers more flexibility. About 10 percent of Nortel’s employees work from home, and an additional 40 percent are "nomadic," Mr. Durow said.

"Time is a precious commodity in all of our lives," he said. "If I have the ability to work from home effectively, then work becomes an activity and not a place with this type of technology."

Texas Instruments Inc. is also exploring the possibility of using unified communications technology, said Laura McGee, manager of e-mail and calendaring in the information technology services department. The Dallas-based company employs 38,000 people in 100 locations worldwide.

But in the meantime, she said, banning e-mail for even one day wouldn’t work.

"We’re a very global company with manufacturing and design occurring around the world all the time," she said. "It’s kind of difficult for us to say we’ll just get up and go talk to somebody because they might be in another time zone."

Instead, the company has focused its efforts on an aggressive spam-filtering program.

"In September, we had 48.3 million messages identified as spam, and we blocked 90 percent of the incoming mail as spam," she said.

Ms. McGee’s findings are in line with the latest research. Spam made up 95 percent of all e-mails in the third quarter of 2007, according to a report by Commtouch Software, an e-mail security firm.

Ms. McGee said employees complain about meetings more than e-mails as being time wasters. Although it’s not a companywide initiative, some employee groups have meeting-free Fridays to give employees more time to work on projects.

Nevertheless, information overload is a serious issue in many offices, and it’s not going away.

"I would say it’s up near the top, right up there with bad bosses," said John Challenger, chief executive of Chicago-based outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. "It’s definitely a necessity of the modern workplace — the cat’s out of the bag now, and we’re not going back to no e-mail. It’s more that we have to figure out boundaries for when e-mail gets too intrusive." Boundary-setting encompasses a whole range of trends, such as shorter vacations and “BlackBerry addiction,” that make workers feel tethered to the office.

"t’s kind of like kudzu. It’s taken over everything, and it’s happened so quickly and totally that there’s no escape, and we haven’t caught up with it to find ways to work out those boundaries," Mr. Challenger said.


PICK YOUR E-MAIL STYLE

To tame your inbox, you first need to determine your work style, says John Challenger, chief executive of Chicago-based outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc.

Push-model: If you need a constant stream of reminders to keep you on track, use technology that “pushes” information to you. Set your e-mail or BlackBerry to flash or chime when you have a new message or to remind you of tasks.

Get-model: If you find yourself overwhelmed by information, turn off those notifications and set aside specific times during the day to “get” your e-mail.

If you’re a boss: “Managers need to understand how to work with people in both camps and not try to fit everybody into the same box, and they could certainly give people training on how to manage their e-mail better,” Mr. Challenger said.
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