CASE APPLICATION #2 Banning E-Mail. Banning Voice Mail Topic: Effective communication t's estimated that the average corporate user sends and receives some 112 e-mails daily. That's about 14 e-mails Several years ago, U.S. Cellular's executive vice president -per hour, and even if half of those don't require a lot of implemented a ban on e-mail every Friday. In his memo an- time and concentration, that level of nouncing the change to employees, he told them to get out and meet the people they work with rather e-mail volume can be stressful and lead than sending an e-mail. That directive to unproductive time. Once imagined to went over with a thad. One employee be a time-saver, has the inbox become What Is necessary confronted him saying that Ellison a burden? What about voice mails? for organizational didn't understand how much work had Are phone messages even necessary for communication? to get done and how much easier it was organizational communication? These when using e-mail. Eventually, how. and other concerns are forcing many organizations to take a ever, employees were won over. Forced to use the phone, one closer look at how information is communicated. employee learned that a coworker he thought was across the large financial institutions, including L.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc., and Bank of America Corp., are deleting or cutting back on phone voice mail. Some company execu- tives explaining their actions cite the reality that few people use voice mail anymore. The question remains, however, whether customers still expect to be able to maintain voice contact with their financial advisors. 466 Part 4 . Leading country was, instead, across the hall. Now, other executives are discovering the benefits of banning e-mail. Tom Gimbel, founder and CEO of LaSalle Network, in- stituted a "no e-mail day" once a quarter. By cutting back on some of the issues associated with email communications, he's found that his employees have gotten better at "live" commu nication, face-to-face conversations, and collaboration. Jessica Rovello, cofounder and president of Arkadium, which develops games, has described e-mail as a form of business attention deficit disorder." She found herself and her employees putting e-mail in the inbox ahead of everything else being worked on. What she decided to do was only check her e-mail four times a day and to turn off her e-mail notification. Another executive. Tim Fry of Weber Shandwick, a global public rela- tions firm, spent a year preparing to "wean" his employees off their e-mail system. His goal: dramatically reduce how much e-mail employees send and receive. His approach started with the firm's interoffice communication system, which became an internal social network, with elements of Facebook, work group collaboration software, and an employee bulletin board. And then there's Thierry Breton, head of Europe's largest IT firm, Atos. He announced a "zero e-mail policy" to be replaced with a service more like Facebook and Twitter combined. The latest casualty in organizational communication choices is voice mail. Under pressure to cut costs, several Discussion Questions 14-18 What do you think of this? Do you agree that e-mail and voice mail can be unproductive in the workplace? 14-19 Were you surprised at the volume of e-mail an average em- ployee receives daily? What are the challenges of dealing with this volume of e-mail? How much e-mail would you say you receive daily? Has your volume of e-mail increased? Have you had to change your e-mail habits? 14-20 What do you think of the e-mail "replacement" some busi- nesses are using more of a social media tool? In what ways might it be better? Worse? 14-21 What role should customer service play in choosing which organizational communication methods to use? 14-22 Write a memo that you would send to your employees telling them that you're declaring a no e-mail day once a month. In that memo, be sure to explain why you're doing it and what benefits you hope your employees will experience