I wanted to talk about sending and receiving work emails. For people who want to get a job and haven’t worked before in an office.
One thing you’re going to come across is that people won’t respond to your emails. Most coworkers will respond. Others will repeatedly fail to respond when you send them a message.
How I operate with email: It is a permanent electronic record. My take is that I would send an email when I wanted to document something to have proof of what is going on.
Anything you say or do on a job that you don’t want to be a matter of public record should not be sent via email.
What can you do with people who don’t respond to your emails?
Sometimes it turns out that sending an email is not the most effective communication tool.
Getting up off your chair and walking to the coworker’s desk to talk might be the better option in this case.
One other situation is that obsessively checking your email can be a time-waster.
At one job I refrained from checking emails first thing in the morning. This was the policy. We were supposed to get right to the work for that day.
I would say that it could be good to check your email during your down time when you have a lull in energy.
Often you will use email to request information from a coworker who is working with you on a project. This is one use of work email.
In a coming blog entry I’m going to talk in more detail about working from home / WFH.
WorkingAssets 