Effective & Efficient Emailing

Managing email overload

Managing your inbox: Some tips and features for managing and maintaining your inbox.

• Automatic replies: Set up an out-of-office reply when you are not monitoring your emails – this may be on vacation, on a work trip or because of an all-day meeting. Out-of-office emails will help others understand why you are slow to respond, and they may even deter some emails from arriving as the senders seek other ways of accessing information. Your out-of-office reply should include the email of another colleague to contact in your absence in cases of emergency.
• Email flags: Some people use email tags to help organise their workload. This applies a colour or symbol to an email in your inbox, usually to group it by category, to flag it for follow-up or to mark it as complete. These tags are particularly useful if you are using a shared mailbox, to indicate which team member is actively responding to which email.
• Filing: Your inbox already has folders for Inbox, Drafts, Sent Items, Deleted Items, Junk Email and Outbox. You may find it useful to set up additional folders to archive your email according to the project, service or team with which they are associated. Some people keep a ‘Praise’ folder to store emails in which people thank you or commend your work. This can be useful for appraisals, references or for when you’re having a bad day! Remember, when searching for emails, to look in the correct folder. If you’re not sure, search in ‘All Outlook Items’.

Reducing email overload: It’s in all of our interest to reduce the number of emails sent around the university. Below are some tips to avoid clogging up your inbox and those of others

• Search before Sending: Before sending an email, consider whether you could find out the answer to the query yourself. A lot of university services, like ISS and Accounts, have thorough FAQs with answers to the most common questions. Staff can also search the Staff FAQs site, which covers a range of topics.
• Avoid undirected requests: It might sound counterintuitive, but often the more people you email your request to, the less likely you are to receive a response. That’s because each recipient thinks someone else will respond. You should target your email request to the person you think is best positioned to answer it. Ask them to direct you to the appropriate contact, in the event that they cannot help.
• Use templates for frequently used responses: If you receive the same requests for information regularly, create a number of stock answers for response. This is more efficient than creating new messages each time the need arises.
• Set clear instructions at the start emails: This is often called the ‘call to action’, i.e. the specific action that you want or need the recipient(s) to make after reading your email. Be clear what the purpose of your email is, and communicate this to your recipient(s).
• Avoid flowery language: University emails are a work medium and should be as short and direct as possible, albeit while setting a friendly and professional tone. If your emails are often very long or if you find yourself spending a lot of time crafting them, you should consider changing your writing style. It’s ok to be cut to the chase. As long as the tone is polite, your reader will appreciate the brevity.
• Answer all questions and pre-empt further questions: It has happened to us all – that message with a ‘quick question’ becomes an email thread. Try to answer all questions in incoming emails and pre-empt further questions be directing the emailer to sources of further information where possible.
• Tools to help you schedule meetings: It can sometimes take a lot of emails back and forth to find an available time for meeting. You can use the ‘Scheduling Assistant’ feature in Outlook to see gaps in the work diaries of the people you are inviting to meet. Alternatively, you can use an online scheduler, like Doodle, to check people’s availability before sending a meeting request.