A survey by email management consultancy Mesmo shows that three quarters of all employees are spending around half of their day dealing with email.

A quarter of these are spending more than four hours a day.

The survey also shows, however, that virtually no UK companies train their employees in how to use email effectively.

Ninety-two per cent of the 130 personal assistants questioned said that neither they nor their managers had been offered any form of email training.

Email guru and Mesmo managing partner Dr Monica Seeley says that government and independent surveys show that each of us wastes at least 45 minutes a day dealing with unwanted email.

"We are losing around 20 days a year of productive working time. This is an outrageous waste of a company’s investment in people and needlessly adds to workplace stress. Training quickly gives back this time and more,” she adds.

The Mesmo survey conducted towards the beginning of this year highlights the growing time people are spending on their email, the lack of security and the poor use of email as a communications tool.

“People and organisations without training use email inefficiently. Organisations tend to produce a constant stream of communication and often make inappropriate use of the medium," Dr Seeley points out.

One example from her survey is that 81.3 per cent of people think others do not use the ‘cc’ function correctly. Her work confirms this as she sees far too many people ‘cc’ing to cover their backs and sending email out indiscriminately.

"They are not thinking who actually needs this information before they press send,” she adds.

Another finding was that most people think emails are too long with 62 per cent stating that the optimum size for an email should be no more than 4-5 sentences.

Seeley says people need help and guidance with softer issues such as style, clarity, brevity as well as content of emails, i.e. what is and is not appropriate to put in writing in an email.

”Many users do not understand how insecure an email is and that inappropriate comment in an email can be regarded as defamatory,” Seeley warns.

Another concern revealed by the Mesmo survey is that nearly half (43.4 per cent) of respondents said their companies had no EDRM (Electronic Documents and Records Management) Policy.

An additional 30 per cent did not know if their company had a policy at all. An EDRM policy defines what emails and documents are kept, by whom and until when.

Lack of such policies can lead to serious breaches of confidentiality and security of company data.

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