MANAGING OFFICE COMMUNICATION

Email and Office Productivity
in Air Combat Command

Report prepared by:
Karin Walls

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I	EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
II	INTRODUCTION
III	HOW E-MAIL IS USED
IV	RECOMMENDATION
V	REFERENCES

I	EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

"I can't even go to lunch anymore. My in-box is always full."  (civilian employee) 

"I just delete half of the mail I get each day. No one knows where it comes from anyway and nine times out of ten, you'll get another copy [in your inbox] before the day is done." (military manager)

"I've got so much e-mail stored on my computer, I can't find anything anymore. The department needs to do something." (office secretary)

These are just a few of the comments received when I asked some of the employees of Air Combat Command's (ACC) Logistics Directorate how they felt about managing their email accounts on the job. In the late 1980's, the Air Force and ACC came "on-line" and entered the digital communication age. E-mail became the "official" means of communicating between the many Air Force and Department of Defense agencies. Initially touted as the answer to going paperless for the Air Force, e-mail has become the primary means of communication in many of our organizations. Mid- and senior- level managers rarely hold meetings to discuss important issues. Nearly every important issue is discussed via e-mail. Important combat regulations are reviewed via e-mail, employees are asked to comment via e-mail, and personal memoranda are received via e-mail.

There are several problems with this type of reliance on e-mail for office communication. 

The problem with email: 
	•	Little or no personal communication between managers and employees
	
	•	Employees feel overwhelmed by the amount of mail in their in-boxes
	
	•	Critical due dates are missed as e-mails "pile up" in the employee or manager's in-box
 	
	•	Lack of standardized procedures for handling e-mail

While ACC has published a handbook for project managers and employees to use as a guide in managing official communications within the organization, I recommend the 

following "rules", which can be adopted to assist employees in getting control of their in-box.

•	Don't set your e-mail account to alert you when new messages arrive either through a tone or pop-up message
o	This breaks your concentration and causes interruptions to be more frequent.
•	Don't keep your e-mail account running in the foreground all the time.
o	This causes you to be tied to your computer. You must choose the time and frequency for reviewing your e-mail account.
•	Use colors to code your incoming messages.
o	This allows you to quickly identify personal and professional messages and easily distinguishes SPAM.
These ideas will be more fully discussed in Section IV of this report.

II	INTRODUCTION
Nearly everyone does it. Nearly everyone has one. It is an e-mail account. For millions of office workers in the United States, e-mail is the greatest breakthrough in communication since the invention of the printing press. E-mail has increased personal productivity in offices and, when used appropriately, it makes everyone's job a little easier. But what happens when e-mail hurts productivity?  When does e-mail make our offices more inefficient and what can we do about it?     
According to industry analysts, organizations are struggling with the sheer amount of e-mail their IT systems are processing. In an online article from Computer Weekly, the author [unknown], "Estimates that in a company with just 150 e-mail users, managing e-mail is the equivalent of one full-time job" ("E-mail," 2003). The problem with this estimation is that control is not usually limited to one person. More than one-third of the company's employees are managing their e-mail with no regard for what should be kept and what should be deleted. Additionally, organizations lack consistency when there are no preset guidelines for managing personal and professional e-mail communications. 
The Logistics Directorate of Air Combat Command (ACC) employs about 700 military and civilian employees as part of the larger organization of Air Combat Command, which employs nearly 2,500 personnel. Depending on an employee's position within this large organization, he or she may receive more than 150 e-mails per week. In fact, my research indicated that many mid- to senior-level managers received an average of 20-30 e-mails a day, while their administrative staffs can process more than 250 messages per week. As these electronic messages fly back and forth across the base and around the world, employees are left feeling out of control and stressed. 
Additionally, one-to-one communication between managers and employees is suffering. According to an online article in The Financial Times (2004), author Malcolm White suggests, "E-mail reduces human contact by making people lazy about talking to each other" (p. 6).  In this organization, managers and employees have become increasingly dependent on interoffice e-mail. We use e-mail not only to communicate on a professional basis with other offices, but sometimes, we are also dependent on e-mail to conduct our personal conversations as well. While there is still some "water-cooler" chat that takes place within the office, it has become easier to just send an e-mail. The problem with this is two-fold. First, employees are becoming "slaves" to their inboxes. Second, managers are not always communicating their needs most effectively to their employees. This causes a breakdown in communication which is being felt throughout the organization. 

III	HOW E-MAIL IS USED

The task force identified three primary categories of e-mail used within Air Combat Command. The following graph shows the categories and the percentage of usage for each type. 

  

In reviewing the graph, it is evident that inter-office correspondence makes up the largest portion of message traffic in this organization. Fifty-seven percent of all e-mail transferred are messages between offices and divisions on Langley Air Force Base. This means that more than half of all the e-mail on the Langley servers is local traffic and could possibly be addressed through more personal communications, such as video tele-conferencing meetings and/or intra-organizational staff meetings. By holding these types of face-to-face meetings, it would significantly reduce the amount of e-mail traffic handled not only on the local servers, but also within an employee's personal e-mail box. Additionally, many survey respondents confirmed this data by indicating that they rarely attended staff meetings, as meeting notes were regularly passed through e-mail channels.

Additional research indicated that office productivity is actually declining because very often important projects and messages are lost in the shuffle from inbox to inbox. Organizations have implemented "organizational inboxes" to assist in controlling the flow of messages between offices and to provide a better tracking tool. One person is assigned to monitor the messages that are received and sent from these types of e-mail accounts. This does help with consistency, but I found that as the level of responsibility rises within the organization, so does the amount of e-mail received and sent. In the next section, I will give several tips on how to increase productivity through smarter management of organizational and personal e-mail accounts.

IV	RECOMMENDATION

The research confirms that an overuse of e-mail is sometimes hindering productivity within the organization. There are two recommendations for improving overall communications within this organization. First, management should encourage better management of personal e-mail accounts using the guidelines outlined below. Second, management should establish weekly staff meetings with their personnel to establish the right balance of personal communication.
•	Don't set your e-mail account to alert you when new messages arrive either through a tone or pop-up message
o	This breaks your concentration and causes interruptions to be more frequent.
o	Focus on one task at a time. It is not effective to try to complete too many projects at once.
•	Don't keep your e-mail account running in the foreground all the time.
o	This causes you to be tied to your computer. You must choose the time and frequency for reviewing your e-mail account.
o	This also establishes a pattern for reviewing messages that will keep you from missing important messages.
•	Try to avoid the pitfall of sending an e-mail and then "running" to the recipient's desk to tell them you sent it. This is redundant; allow the receiver the courtesy of uninterrupted work as well.
•	Use colors to code your incoming messages.
o	This allows you to quickly identify personal and professional messages and easily distinguishes junk-mail.
V	CONCLUSION
As Air Combat Command moves closer to becoming a digital firm (an organization which is totally paperless), it is more important than ever that our information technology tools be managed not just as an office assistant, but rather as the core of our organization's communication chain. E-mail should not be dismissed and overlooked, but managed and balanced with a set of business processes that take advantage of the technology. 

VI	REFERENCES
Becker, F. Workplace strategies for dynamic organizations (2001, October) Online from Cornell University International Workplace Studies Program. Retrieved July 30, 2004. http://iwsp.human.cornell.edu/pubs/excerpts/odws_excerpt2.HTML
Bell, A.H. & Smith, D. M. (1999). Management communication. New York: John Wiley and Sons, pp. 179-195
E-mail overload. (2003, April 15) Computer Weekly. Factiva. p 36. http://80-global.factiva.com.ezproxy.umuc.edu/en/arch/display.asp
The tyranny of email. (2003, March 8) online. Retrieved July 26, 2004. http://www.w-uh.com/articles/030308-tyranny_of_email.html
White, M. (2004, May 25) Think outside the in-box: creative business – creative tensions. Financial Times. Factiva. p. 6. http://80-global.factiva.com.ezproxy.umuc.edu/en/arch/display.asp