Questions and Topics We Can Help You To Answer
"Email and the Professional Workplace"
Read the article “Is Email Evil?”. Compare the author’s take on email with your own professional / personal experience using email. Make a case for the importance of email in the workplace OR present an alternative form of communication that could replace email in the professional environment (be sure to provide reasons to support your claims).
SAMPLE FOR ENG315 DISCUSSION 1 INITIAL POST
"Email and the Professional Workplace"
After reading the article Overflowing inboxes are wrecking productivity and making people feel guilty. Is the technology to blame, or are we? by The Atlantic, the author's take on email with my own professional/personal experience using email is up for debate.
According to Figure 1.3, Levels of Communication, there are several avenues to communicate: Intrapersonal-within oneself, Interpersonal-between two people, Group-among more than two people, Organizational-groups combined in such a way that large tasks may be accomplished, and Public-the organization reaching out to its public to achieve its goal. (BCOM, p.8)
The article states that "The thing about email that bogs people down is the sorting, and responding, the unsubscribing, the reaching out, the circling back. People are, clearly, consumed by their inboxes. On average, people check their email about 77 times per day, according to Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine. (On the high end, people checked their inboxes 373 times a day.) “The more email people do, the lower is their assessed productivity,” Mark said in the podcast. “[and] the lower is their positive mood at the end of the day” (The Atlantic). My take on this is that the article clearly puts "people" into a generalized group and is not specific enough with their statistics (what level of communication did it involve?). In addition, what criteria of "people" were used to determine that email alters your mood (good mood versus bad mood) that Mark referenced?
Within the organization that I am employed with, email is crucial in order to communicate amongst ourselves. Our Principal sends a positive email every morning to all employees and our Assistant Principal's send out emails as well to their assigned grade levels. Once I have logged in in the morning, my first task is to read through my emails and respond as necessary as I work in the Special Education Department and we have state mandated and legal compliance issues to adhere to. Am I obsessed with responding immediately when a 'ding' appears that one responded, no, I continue with the task at hand. When time allows, I view my inbox. Yes, email can be cumbersome, however, there is no way that one could communicate and accomplish all without email in the workplace. I am not in agreement that the cycle of emails referenced in the article "bogs people down" or "lowers their assessed productivity".
Sally
