Extreme Email

I ran across a very interesting article that speaks to the volume of email that companies are challenged to store and manage every day, most of which is low value or no value. Here is a company that has instituted a 'zero (internal) email' policy as a reaction to the contradiction of high email volume and poor internal communication. The French technology company, Atos, has calculated that of the typical 200 emails that employees receive per day, only a mere 10% are useful. It now has a policy that bans it 74,000 employees from sending internal email.

http://news.yahoo.com/tech-firm-implements-employee-zero-email-policy-165311050.html

This is an extreme position that the company has taken, although it certainly makes it's point. In my experience, few employees exercise professional work-place email etiquette. Information Technology departments are challenged to manage and store the digital landfill of millions of emails.

In my experience developing product strategy for records management software, it is very few companies that have internal policies for email protocol and secure archiving. They don't know what to keep and what to destroy. As Atos has acknowledged, instant messaging is a better technology for quick, brief employee communications, as the messages are typically not stored or forwarded.

Is this a trend that will gain momentum in 2012? It is hard to say.