Email and it's Impact in the work place

Jared Thomas
DTC_375
1/23/09

Emails impact to the workplace

What’s the first thing you do when you get to work? Check your email. The introduction of this technology has revolutionized the work place. Email has changed the way we communicate with family, friends, co-workers, and clients alike. I am going to explore how email is changing the way we communicate in a work environment. There are several advantages and disadvantage to using this technology in the work place. In this essay I will go over the affects it has and how we use this technology.
The affects that email has on the way people communicate is a double edge sword. On the positive side email allows for short and concise communication between co-workers. There is nothing worse than when you go down the hall to communicate a message to a co-worker and you get pinned down by them or other people on the way interrupting your production. Another and one of the biggest advantages to email is traceability. What I mean by this is that every message you send out you have the ability to save and document it to cover your tail. I can’t tell you how many times people have come to me and said “I did not receive the email”, so then I have to go back and pull up the date and time I sent it to them so there is no more discussion on the issue and we can get back to the business at hand. Another advantage is the efficiency of email, I can send the same message to 1000 different people with the push of a button, this ensures that everyone gets the same exact message and also saves a tremendous amount of time it would take to call or send out a letter. These are just a couple of examples on how email affects business communication in a good way.
On the down side emails are making the work place much more un-personal for a number of reasons. First, email has allowed people in the work place to rely on a technology to communicate their message and has taken away the responsibility of the individual. This is doing two things; one is that instead of people making sure their message was conveyed to an individual, they simply keep their sent messages. This intern supplies a electronic paper trail allowing them to cover them self by having proof that they sent you the communication so if anyone was to question why ‘so and so’ did not get the message the person can simply state “well I sent it to him on this date” taking the onus off of him. Secondly it is slowly replacing the personal aspect of the work place. For example, many people will send an email to a co-worker who is just down the hall instead of getting out their chair and walking over there to communicate their message. A third disadvantage to email is the amount of storage that is required to archive all of the sent mail, it is said that email traffic should “double between 2005 and 2009, going from 64.9 million to 2 billion messages per day” (Martin, 1). Can you imagine 2 billion messages a day? People have become so dependent on this form of communication it’s hard to believe how we ever functioned without it.
Besides the above mentioned advantages to using emails over other technologies, another one is how simple this technology is. Anyone from your grandma to a 6 year old is able to email. We live in a ‘stay connected’ world now, what I mean by this is that technology has allowed us to stay connected 24/7. With cell phones like Blackberry or the Apple I-phone people are able to check their email anytime they want. This is especially true for the working person; he is able to remain in contact with his office any day of the week. This has several advantages in a working environment. You are now able to leave work and not miss a thing when it comes to communication. You could be anywhere from in a business meeting to on the golf course communicating and staying in the loop. This is amazing technology. Even though these devices have other applications, their main use is to check and produce email and text messages from anywhere.
Today’s world is all about speed. How fast can we communicate with other people? This is very evident in the way we use emails and now text messaging as the primary way to communicate. We have progressed in the business world from hand writing a letter and mailing it, using a type writer and mailing it, to a word processor for memos and faxing it, computer and email, cell phone email. This progression could not have taken place without the previous medium. We as a culture are constantly trying to improve and speed up the communication process, each new step towards better technology is reliant on previous mediums that are similar but not quite the same thing. As we keep advancing to bigger and better technologies one has to wonder how we can keep improving on what we already have.
From a business stand point the advantages that email provides; traceability, reliability, connectivity, and productivity far outweigh the disadvantages. Employers are trying to maximize the time that employees are able to be productive at work. Email has saved immeasurable amount of time in the working environment. So at the current time email is the best form of communication technology in business.
Works Cited
Martin, Nicole, “Keep Your Eyes on the Enterprise: Emails, Wikis, Blogs, and Corporate Risk.”. Econtent. Vol. 30.6 (2002), p54-59.