Email Writing Skills Vital To Job Effectiveness.

Information Mapping, Inc. (IMI) announced results from a recent survey concerning emailing within the workplace. Significant findings revealed that 80% of those surveyed deem email writing skills are ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ important to the effectiveness of doing their jobs. The results also showed excessive time is spent reading and writing emails, with approximately 65% spending from 1 to 3 hours per day doing each.

Nearly 600 individuals took part in the survey, representing a diverse group of industries that included financial services, government, insurance, consulting, telecommunications and health care. Of the participating companies, nearly 50% had 5,000 employees or more, and more thant 80% of those surveyed were of professional and managerial levels and above. Key areas within their job functions include training, documentation, information technology, human resources, general management and operations.

Among the primary challenges and issues concerning emails that the survey exposed were recipient is not clear as to what should be done or how to act on the information content is disorganized critical information is missing or hard to find, and content is too long, wordy and difficult to read.

When asked how much time during an average day was wasted reading ineffectively written emails, 34% indicated between 30 and 60 minutes, 6% said 1 to 3 hours and 58% spend between 0 and 30 minutes.

“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.”