Much has been written about the impact of ’email overload’, in terms of the productivity cost and impact on attention spans for staff. There is another very real cost of the reliance on email: the duplication of information management activities.

‘All staff’ emails are often used to send out new policies and procedures, product updates and other changes. These can range from a few paragraph to 50 pages, and it is left for each staff member to keep track of this information.

In an organisation of 1,000 staff, this leads to the effort of managing these updates being multiplied by a factor of a thousand, generating a significant impact on productivity, consistency and accuracy.

Corporate communication via email

‘All staff’ emails are often used as the primary way of distributing many types of information, including new policies and procedures, changes to IT systems, training materials and product updates.

In many cases, staff need to keep this information for later use. In practice, most staff store these messages in elaborate folders within their email program, so they can be quickly searched when needed. Every staff person comes up with their own folder structure, and conducts their own information management activities.

In practice, these email folders continue to grow until IT enforces limits on mailbox sizes, and they are required to delete potentially valuable information to meet IT policies.

[CM Briefing 2006-12, read the full article]