These are the most hated email communication habits at work, survey says

A woman types on a computer keyboard in North Vancouver, B.C., on Wednesday, December 19, 2012. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward

When emailing co-workers, be sure not to rely on these communication habits, as many employees find them annoying, or offensive, according to a recent survey.

The survey by LiveCareer, an online career assistance platform, revealed the top most-hated email habits for 2023 to avoid. Over 1,000 employees were surveyed in order to examine general attitudes toward digital workplace communication and the best and the worst work email communication practices.

The study states that emails with no personal greeting, starting with a generic “hey” or “hey there”, beginning an email with “as discussed” and signing off an email with “warmly” or “regards” without mentioning your name, must be avoided.

The study also found that requesting read receipts is an acceptable behaviour when it comes to workplace emails and that 80 per cent of respondents agreed with the statement. As many as 75 per cent said sending an email without proofreading is acceptable behaviour and 75 per cent said that BCC’ing recipients on work emails is acceptable.

As well, 39 per cent of respondents said you should expect a response to an email three to six hours after it was sent.

And almost half (49 per cent) of respondents stated that their favorite form of communication for work purposes is email.

However, 83 per cent of workers agreed that online communication is more likely to cause misunderstandings than in-person communication.

The majority of respondents (81 per cent) also said that online communication is more time-consuming than in-person communication.

Overall, these are the other workplace communication sins, according to the survey:

• Rambling emails

• Multiple emails when one would suffice

• People sending broken links

• Getting text messages during meals

• Interrupting a conversation

• Not feeling safe, lack of trust in email cybersecurity

• Attachment size (not big enough)

• Vagueness in messages

• Answering with one-word answers

• Rudeness

According to the study, 40 per cent of workers are spending two to three hours each day reading and replying to emails, while 10 per cent of respondents said they spend less than one hour each day checking their email.

When it comes to cleaning an inbox or sorting emails, 37 per cent of workers said they spend two to three hours each week to do so, and three per cent of respondents stated that it takes more than four hours to clean their inbox and sort their emails each week. The percentage of people spending less than one hour each week to do so is 12 per cent.

When the survey respondents were asked whether they achieved inbox zero after cleaning or sorting their inboxes, 62 per cent said yes and 38 per cent stated they did not.

METHODOLOGY

LiveCareer states its findings were obtained by surveying 1032 people online using a polling tool. According to the methodology the platform included in its report, respondents “were asked a wide range of questions regarding workplace communication (i.a. email and instant messaging etiquette, dos and don'ts, attitudes toward online communication for work purposes, and more). These included yes/no questions, scale-based questions relating to levels of agreement with a statement, questions that permitted the selection of multiple options from a list of potential answers, and a question that allowed open responses. All respondents included in the study passed an attention-check question.”

Reporting for this story was paid for through The Afghan Journalists in Residence Project funded by Meta.