The average employee spends 10 hours and 47 minutes a week drafting emails that few recipients read, according to new research.<br /><br />The survey of 8,000 small business employees (split evenly between Americans and Brits) asked respondents how much time they spend on emails: they draft an average of 112 emails a week, spending just over five and a half minutes on each.<br /><br />But small business employees surveyed believe their emails are only fully read and understood by their recipients a third (36%) of the time.<br /><br />This might explain why respondents said that when their email is responded to, it’s common to have their questions not be answered (62%), to be addressed by the wrong name (51%) or to be asked a question they just answered (49%).<br /><br />Respondents are aware they’re guilty of not reading emails, too: over half (57%) admitted that if an email is “too long” — eight or more sentences — they won’t bother reading the whole thing.<br /><br />With that, small business employees delete, or otherwise don’t read, an email based solely on the subject line an average of eight times per day.<br /><br />This is detrimental for employees: 45% have missed something (like a deadline, a meeting, etc.) because they didn’t read an important email.<br /><br />Commissioned by Slack and conducted by OnePoll, the survey delved further into email and explored what alternatives small business employees would like to see for workplace communication.<br /><br />Almost half (46%) of respondents said that email is an “outdated form of communication.”<br /><br />Some of their frustration comes from losing emails to the spam or junk folders (53%), or their inbox being clogged with emails that aren’t relevant to them (50%) — others said it’s easy to misconstrue tone over email (47%) and there’s an expectation of staying “formal” (45%).<br /><br />When it comes to staying “formal,” younger generations were more likely to see that as an expectation and find it a challenge. Results found 57% of Gen Zers and 46% of millennials agreed, while only 37% of Gen X and 34% of baby boomers said the same.<br /><br />There was also a direct correlation between age and feeling like emails are a waste of time. Younger respondents were more likely to say emails are not worth it (41% of Gen Z and 38% of millennials) compared to older generations (30% of Gen X and 22% of baby boomers).
