The email communication gap

The perception of anonymity offered by the internet can work to create a sense of invincibility whereby people will often write in an email what they would not dare to say face-to-face to a person. Of course, the danger with emails is that, unlike in a telephone or face-to-face conversation, there is a log of what has been said. Employees who write and send emotionally charged emails, therefore, put themselves and the business at risk.

In a recent survey, Citrix Online discovered that 61 percent of the Australian workforce admits to having sent or received an email that was misunderstood. Forty-one percent recognise they have sent an email to the wrong person. Nearly two-thirds of workers agreed they hit the reply button without ever considering if email was, indeed, the most effective means of communicating what they wanted to say. Australians have been labelled as ‘trigger-happy’ when it comes to emailing.

The way men and women use email also differs greatly. In their essay, The Email Gender Gap, Niki Panteli and Monica Seeley argue that women tend to be more polite, pay more attention to grammar, and prefer to keep their emails conversational. Men, in contrast, are direct and instructive. They are more spontaneous and impulsive when it comes to emailing. And they are more likely to include a signature to show their status. Trying to encourage male employees (the larger part of the Australian workforce) to pay closer attention to the content of their emails is, therefore, a difficult task. In the Australian culture, men are expected to be a little bit rough around the edges. Being polite and being articulate are considered feminine and weak traits. Try getting the men in your workplace to take these important attributes on board.

With 86 percent of the Australian workforce believing that an over-reliance on email can lead to ineffective business communications, there is now an urgent need to consider the importance of training in email etiquette. It is no longer sufficient to assume that an ability to read and write—skills most of us were taught pre-email—naturally equips us to use email to help encourage, rather than discourage, communication.

* Dr Dean Durber is manager of communications consultancy Media Panic, www.mediapanic.com.au

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and don’t necessarily reflect the opinions of DYNAMICBUSINESS.com or the publishers.