This flood of e-mails can be very distracting and has led employers to look for alternatives. The opinions of the employees are split according to a survey: many would like a different way of internal communication, e.g. in-house social networks or an employee intranet. In a recent US study, 23 % of workers admitted that e-mail was a ‘primary productivity stopper in the workplace’.
There are many tools that can be used to channel e-mail traffic in a better way and to run secondary messages over other channels like social media or chat:
- Social intranet
- Google+
- Apps and messaging services
- Extensions for e-mail clients
- Company blog or microblogging
- Wikis
Customer communication will continue mostly through e-mails. Many internal processes can be coordinated through channels such as staff announcements, press reviews, event invitations, meetings, as well as employee surveys and internal newsletters.