We are renovating the HVAC system of our central office beginning in January and this has caused me to go through my office to pack for the move. This has also given me the opportunity to throw out some old items. In the process, it has given me the chance to review some books I have not looked at in a while.
One such book is titled “Time Wasters/Time Savers: 61 Ways to Beat the Clock” published by ASBO. One chapter is devoted to the 20 worst time wasters. Some of the 20 include red tape, failure to organize, failure to identify the problem, lack of objectives and goals and excessive coffee breaks. I don’t know about you, but I have been a school business official for 21 years and I cannot remember ever taking a coffee break in my career. I then thought about my staff, and I can honestly say that I am not aware of any of them taking a coffee break either. There is simply too much to do and not enough time to get all of the tasks accomplished in an eight-hour day.
My staff is at their computers most of the day. Hopefully, all of our subordinates are diligently working away on school related items at their computers. A recent survey by a Chicago based employment research firm found that an estimated 36.8 million Americans participate in fantasy football during the NFL season, costing employers as much as $1.1 billion weekly in lost productivity. Wow! Just think if even a portion of that could be somehow be funneled into America’s classrooms. But don’t run out of your offices too quickly and start looking over your subordinates’ shoulders to see if they are working on fantasy football instead of account reconciliation. That same Chicago-based firm said that “the potential damage to morale and loyalty resulting from a…ban could be far worse than the loss of productivity caused by 10 minutes of online team management.”
The ASBO book was published in 1994, before the majority of us were involved in e-mail communication on a daily basis. I always complain about the large number of e-mails sent daily and how long it takes to read and respond to them. I surely thought that if ASBO were to update their aforementioned publication that spam e-mail would surely be one of the time wasters. So I decided to do a little research on e-mail and found some interesting facts.
According to EmailStatCenter.com, business recipients get nearly 100 e-mails per day. I personally have not hit this number, but have received over 80 messages on some days. Sixty percent of people who read an e-mail only read 50% of the message. This is a good reminder to all of us to keep our e-mail messages brief and to the point.
Sixty percent of people who e-mail admit to checking their personal e-mail at work an average of three times a day. While only 15% of those who do so have been busted by their bosses, 28% say they feel guilty about it. I wonder how many use district e-mail for their personal messages?
Fifty-nine percent of people e-mailing from portable devices are checking e-mail while in bed in their pajamas, 53% in the bathroom, 37% while they drive and 12% even check e-mail in church. While some of these statistics can be filed in the “too much information” category, it points to the fact some of us really do have too much work for the standard eight-hour day. Or, could it be that we are addicted to e-mail? Fifteen percent of Americans admit to being addicted to e-mail.
Spam e-mail is a problem not only in the United States. According to an article published in TechNewsWorld, spam e-mail costs the United States $20 billion in lost time and expenses worldwide. Expect this to increase as 70.6% of marketers planned on increasing their e-mail acquisition in 2007 over 2006. I’m sure all of us would agree that spam e-mail is an item we have all had to expend district resources on, as we have all had to install filters to try to keep the trash from hitting innocent eyes.
There were two statistics about e-mail that were promising. Over 70% of the end users surveyed say that e-mail impacts positively on their productivity. I also learned that between 25% and 30%of the greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere each year, or about 1.6 billion tons, are caused by deforestation. With all the recent news about global warming, the more business we can conduct electronically, the less paper we will need which will ultimately help the environment. I now have a different viewpoint of e-mail.