* How workers use e-mail
We have just concluded a study of e-mail users to find out how people in the workplace employ e-mail, how frequently they check e-mail while at work and at home, the importance of e-mail in helping people to do their work, etc. Here are some of the highlights of that research:
* In the context of helping them to get their work done, three-quarters of people consider e-mail to be ‘extremely important,’ while another one in six consider e-mail to be important.
* In a survey that Osterman Research conducted during early 2004, we found that 68% of e-mail users checked their e-mail ‘more or less continually’ while at work – that figure is slightly higher in the current survey.
* Today, e-mail users are checking their work e-mail from home more often than they were in the survey we conducted three years ago. Nearly two-thirds of e-mail users check their work-related e-mail from home on weekdays at least once per day. On weekends, we found that a slightly greater number of people check their work e-mail account at least once per weekend and most of these people do so more often than that.
* While on vacation, one-quarter of e-mail users check their work e-mail at least once per day, while another third check their work e-mail at least once during their vacation.
* The average e-mail user spends two hours and 15 minutes doing something in their e-mail client on a typical day.
This information points to the absolutely critical nature of e-mail in helping people to get their work done. Most people check their work e-mail account almost continually at work, they check e-mail from home, they check it on weekends and when they’re on vacation. As unified messaging systems become more widely used, people are likely to spend even more time in their inbox given the greater proportion of their communications and other content that will be stored in their messaging system.
