Four actions to beat problematic email behaviours

In this podcast Dr Emma Russell of the University of Sussex joins Dr Helen Fitzhugh from the Evolve Workplace Wellbeing Team. Emma is an expert in understanding email behaviours at work - those which support workplace wellbeing and better performance - and those which are problematic and should be avoided. In this podcast she explains four 'super actions' to beat problematic email behaviours and in doing so, improve wellbeing and performance. 

With colleagues she has just published an open access review article in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology:
https://doi-org.uea.idm.oclc.org/10.1111/joop.12462

Find more resources drawn from Emma's research here:
https://digit-research.org/research/related-projects/understanding-email-incivility/  

Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:35:13

Helen Fitzhugh

Welcome to the Evolve Workplace Wellbeing Podcast. This podcast is part of a toolkit of free evidence informed workplace wellbeing resources provided by the Workplace Wellbeing Research Team at the University of East Anglia in the UK. You can find the resources on www.evolveworkplacewellbeing.org . We're here today to talk to Emma Russell, who is reader in occupational and organizational Psychology at the University of Sussex and Co-Investigator at the Digital Futures at Work Centre.

00:00:35:15 - 00:00:55:02

Helen Fitzhugh

I'm Helen Fitzhugh, researcher and Knowledge Exchange fellow at the University of East Anglia. Emma, welcome. Thank you for joining us on the Evolve Workplace Wellbeing Podcast. 

Emma Russell

Thank you for having me. 

Helen Fitzhugh

It would be lovely to hear a little bit about the research you do and how long you've been doing it and the topic we're going to discuss today.

00:00:55:02 - 00:01:19:02

Helen Fitzhugh

So if you want to launch straight in and let us know a little bit about you. 

Emma Russell

Well, I started researching problematic email use at the very beginning of my academic career when I began my Ph.D. in psychology at Surrey University, and that was right back in the early 2000s when email was very much a new kid on the block.

00:01:19:02 - 00:01:52:11

Emma Russell

And people were just getting used to this new technology that meant that they could communicate in text based form that was starting to cause problems for people, particularly after the dial up era when email started to become much more prevalent and was arriving pretty much at the point where people were sending it. And the problems I was looking at at that point was really just had people deal with email interruptions and the strategies that they used to manage those and to manage their wellbeing.

00:01:52:13 - 00:02:21:12

Emma Russell

And I did that as part of my Ph.D. and then took about five years out of academia on a motherhood career break. When I returned to academia, which was around 2011, 2012, I really didn't expect that anyone would still be interested in looking at email at work, but it still remains even today, the most popular form of digital communication at work.

00:02:21:12 - 00:02:50:05

Emma Russell

So at the digital centre we've just done a pulse survey with 3000 working adults asking people what communication tools they use, and the most popular by a long way is still email. So email is something that is not really ingrained in our working lives and really inherent to the way that we communicate with each other and the problematic behaviours associated with that I think have just exploded.

00:02:50:07 - 00:03:15:11

Emma Russell

It's very interesting that after more than 25 years really of email being part of our work place behaviours that we still don't really know how to deal with effectively and we still don't really understand email etiquette, how to manage it, how to access it when to switch it off, and to think about all of those elements in relation to both our work performance and our wellbeing.

00:03:15:13 - 00:03:40:00

Emma Russell

So today I am still researching problematic email use and how people manage their email at work and the way that it impact their work performance and their wellbeing. And we've just completed a big study. So this is a paper that's just come out this week actually in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology Relations.

Helen Fitzhugh

Congratulations

Emma Russell

Thank you very much.

00:03:40:02 - 00:04:12:13

Emma Russell

So we reviewed the 62 academic papers that looked at how people deal with email and how email impacts their work performance and their wellbeing. And from that review of the literature, we were able to identify four - what we call - super actions. And these are actions that if people adopt for engaging with that email have been found in the research literature to be associated with improved work performance and improved wellbeing.

00:04:12:15 - 00:04:38:09

Emma Russell

So there's really not many actions that will consistently predict both. So if you use an action that maybe is good for your work performance, it might mean that your wellbeing suffers and vice versa. But we were able to identify four key actions that if you adopt these the research literature suggesting you will be more productive and more healthy as a worker.

00:04:38:11 - 00:05:07:15

Helen Fitzhugh

Wow, that sounds really useful and wonderful that we've caught you just as the paper has been published. So I'm just going to ask straightaway what are the four actions? What should we be doing? 

Emma Russell

Okay, so the first of those actions is how important it is to communicate and adhere to your accessibility boundaries in terms of work email. So just to let people know really when you were available to deal with email and when you're not available.

00:05:07:17 - 00:05:31:02

Emma Russell

And we know from the academic literature that everybody needs some time every day where they need to switch off from work, and that includes switching off from work email to experience what's known as psychological detachment can work because it's when you're switched off from work that you're right, you're able to engage in recovery, which will then be helpful for your productivity and your well-being.

00:05:31:04 - 00:05:50:20

Emma Russell

So we don't necessarily say there are particular times when you should be switching off your email only that everyone needs to make sure that at some point every day they're switching off their email. They're telling people when that is, and they're adhering to that. So I think it's very easy to think, well, 7:00 I'm going to switch off and I'm not going to look at anything the next morning.

00:05:50:22 - 00:06:20:08

Emma Russell

But then there's that letter that pearl of the email pinging on your phone. That means maybe you don't necessarily stick to it. And the problem there then is that people form an expectation that they can contact you whenever they want to and that you will respond. Whereas if you are saying these are the times when I'm not available and you actually stick to it, then that is very obviously beneficial for you and for your work colleagues and for your wellbeing.

00:06:20:10 - 00:07:09:17

Emma Russell

So that's the first action. Great. The second action is about regularly kind of checking your work, email and sorting, dealing with it and reprioritizing things. So what that means is not necessarily having your notifications on all the time, but just making sure that through the working day you're going into your email, you're checking what's going on, you're seeing if there are messages that can be deleted, messages that can go into A to do list, and that you're sort of constantly evaluating how those emails fit with your work priorities for that day and whether there are any new priorities that you might need to make or anything that perhaps needs to be removed, deleted and forwarded

00:07:09:17 - 00:07:45:01

Emma Russell

to somebody else. So we call that kind of triaging your inbox, basically kind of this this housekeeping of your inbox that really resulted in people feeling in control of that email, not feeling like they were enslaved by that ping, that beep and feeling able to deal with it at times in periods that suit suit them. So I think for me personally, that's a finding that I've really tried to take on board and have found to be extremely helpful.

00:07:45:03 - 00:08:03:06

Emma Russell

So I now don't like it when my inbox is more than the page that I can see on the screen. I do like to have more messages than that, so I am always reviewing my inbox, putting things into a to do list that it's out of the box. That something that I know has to be dealt with later.

00:08:03:06 - 00:08:37:14

Emma Russell

And those tend to be low priority items. And that clearing messages that I can deal with very quickly say know if I'm checking it relatively regularly in this setting, that just requires a short answer. I can deal with it, get rid of it, file it, and then move on to something else. So for me, that really helps me to feel like I'm in control of this constant barrage of messages that we're all subject to these days, that the recommendation from the research is probably to switch your notifications off and just make sure that you're regularly checking it.

00:08:37:14 - 00:08:54:21

Emma Russell

So when you get to a natural break point in a task that you're undertaking, then that might be when you look at it. But of course that does depend on different jobs. Know if you're in customer service and your job is to deal with email inquiries throughout the day and you need your notifications on and you need to be dealing with it much more regularly.

00:08:54:23 - 00:09:20:16

Emma Russell

So we wouldn't ever give a kind of one size fits all solution that just to stay, keep checking, reprioritize, review, delete, file, all of those things to help your inbox feel like it's under your control and it's manageable and so that things don't get overlooked.

Helen Fitzhugh

Great. Thank you. That's a good clarification. Yeah. 

Emma Russell

So that was the second action category.

00:09:20:16 - 00:09:48:24

Emma Russell

The third was ensuring that you use your work email only to send work critical and work relevant messages. So if you're using email to ask, for example, has anybody seen my favourite mug? That's probably not very helpful. And what happens then is you get lots of email traffic, you get lots of ping pong emailing, lots of reply to always and cc’ing in people that don't need to be cc’d.

00:09:49:01 - 00:10:14:21

Emma Russell

So really trying to just keep work email for work email is important. And we found that when people were doing that in the research studies where people were just using email for the work critical messages, they were working much more effectively. So their inboxes were less swollen with all of the noise and the detritus that comes from being part of modern organizational life.

00:10:14:21 - 00:10:47:12

Emma Russell

And that's really, I think, important for reducing strain and improving your overall productivity. And then the final area is about the kind of the tone and the consideration of other people in your use of email. So we found that as you might expect, when you show consideration to your colleagues and you use a civil, courteous, polite tone when you're engaging with them over email, then this is really helpful.

00:10:47:12 - 00:11:13:03

Emma Russell

So sort of clear, concise, short messages that take into account other people have other things to do and where you're conveying kind of normal levels of politeness and courtesy for your particular job industry is is really important. So that's quite important as well to note that of course there are different kind of norms of etiquette in different industries.

00:11:13:03 - 00:11:41:22

Emma Russell

So we've worked with the financial services sector and they can actually sound quite abrupt often in the way that they email each other, but they're in a very fast paced, fast moving environments and for them normatively, it's okay just to write, you know, can you send me X, Y, Z without all the salutations and the greetings and the how we use and all the rest of it, now that in another organization environment would probably be seen as highly discourteous.

00:11:41:24 - 00:12:17:10

Emma Russell

So it is about understanding what's appropriate for your environment. But there were never really any occasions when kind of actually rude or disrespectful messaging is accepted. And we know from the research that when you're the target of uncivil emailing, it has very negative repercussions both for you, both for your colleagues. And this is enduring. So it's not just that you feel upset at the time that you receive it that will often stay with you over the weekend and into the next working week as well.

00:12:17:12 - 00:12:46:24

Emma Russell

From the research studies that have been done on uncivil email in behaviour. So we would always be encouraging organizations to to be clear about what etiquette looks like in their organization and what are rules of engagement for using work email. Is it appropriate to be saying thank you when somebody has has offered some help? Is it appropriate to be saying, Dear Helen, best regards, Emma.

00:12:47:01 - 00:13:15:09

Emma Russell

What's appropriate within that organization? What's appropriate in setting expectations of response times? You know, sometimes organizations set very arbitrary response times. Please respond to all emails within an hour or within 24 hours. And it's arbitrary because you should be dealing with any work email in the way you would deal with any other work task. You know, you prioritize it according to need.

00:13:15:11 - 00:13:42:07

Emma Russell

So if you are then saying everyone should respond in an hour and you start getting chased, if you haven't replied within that hour, that's actually very discourteous and unhelpful and inefficient. So organizations can be helpful by setting standards and rules of etiquette and also being clear about response time promises. You know, you respond in a time that is appropriate for the priority of the message.

00:13:42:12 - 00:14:06:03

Helen Fitzhugh

That's great. It strikes me that responding to emails because it happens on your own individual computer might feel like a very individual thing. Is there any evidence on how organizations might help people to change and improve not only their etiquette but their actions as well? Like any initiatives or programmes where people have learned to have a healthier email life?

00:14:06:07 - 00:14:28:04

Emma Russell

Yeah. So we have worked with organizations that use shared inboxes and team inboxes, and that's actually been found to be quite helpful, particularly in roles where there's lots of part time staff. So it means that if a query comes in to a group or a team, then whoever is on duty at that point would be the person that deals with it.

00:14:28:04 - 00:14:49:21

Emma Russell

So it means that the sender is being responded to in a timely way, but it means that you as as an individual person, aren't necessarily responsible for that. And if you only work for a Monday to Wednesday or something like that, then you know, you don't want to be checking your email on your time off to make sure that everybody's being dealt with appropriately.

00:14:49:23 - 00:15:16:24

Emma Russell

So I think the use of shared inboxes is is really useful. 

Helen Fitzhugh

And you mentioned the four actions that you could take and they were from a review that you did that also said, well, these could help both wellbeing and performance. So I just wondered if you could give us a little bit more detail on on how they do that and why people in organizations might find it useful to pay attention to these four actions and try and try and do them.

00:15:17:01 - 00:15:51:13

Emma Russell

Yeah. So what we did was we condensed all of the 62 papers that we analysed to understand what were the different actions that people were using. And we came up with 13 different categories of action. And then what were the different categories of wellbeing and categories of work performance? And for example, some of the wellbeing categories were whether people experience strain and burnout versus positive effect and good coping behaviours, whether people experienced disengagement and withdrawal versus whether they were satisfied, committed and engaged.

00:15:51:15 - 00:16:18:02

Emma Russell

And so what we did was for each of the 13 action categories, we then went back to the literature to look at whether each action was positively or negatively predicting wellbeing in each of the four categories and work performance in each of the three categories, and only the actions that had uniformly positive effects for both wellbeing and work performance.

00:16:18:04 - 00:16:45:14

Emma Russell

And that's, I think, really important for managers to take heed of because there's so many kind of gurus out there saying, you know, you get your inbox down to zero or turn off notifications completely or you have a right to disconnect from 6 p.m. onwards or whatever happens to be.

00:16:45:16 - 00:17:11:21

Emma Russell

But how much of that is actually grounded in an evidence base is actually quite sketchy. So what we've been able to find is this is the evidence base. This is what all of these 62 papers are saying, all the actions that will help you feel well in your work. So to feel engaged, feel like you're in control, have a good work life balance and not feel overloaded.

00:17:11:23 - 00:17:38:08

Emma Russell

And these are the actions that also help you to be effective in your job, effective at building good working relationships with others, effective at dealing with your email. So all of these actions are the ones that have kind of ticked the boxes on those elements. And we couldn't find any negative studies or negative reports that resulted in in poor performance or poor wellbeing.

00:17:38:10 - 00:18:08:15

Emma Russell

Now for every other action category, there were lots of contradictions. So for example, using work email outside of your working hours was really positive for some types of work performance. So people who use email outside of working hours generally build good social capital, build good social relationships with their colleagues because they're obviously prioritizing them in their own time.

00:18:08:21 - 00:18:58:18

Emma Russell

So colleagues appreciate that. But it also had negative implications for work performance in that they would potentially feel more stress and more exhaustion because they weren't engaging in the usual recovery behaviours that we need at some point in every day. And ditto, it had some positives for wellbeing, so some people felt that it helped them keep on top of heavy workloads and that therefore made them feel more in control, whereas other people felt it just further exhausted them and actually made them feel like they were tired and fatigued and maybe had difficulty sleeping because they weren't switching off effectively.

00:18:58:20 - 00:19:24:16

Emma Russell

So yes, so for each of the other actions, I would be very hesitant as a manager to recommend to people and, you know, never, never deal with email outside of working hours or or always deal with email outside of working hours because it had such a contradictory effect. But we feel relatively confident with the full super email actions that these are things that we would recommend to email users.

00:19:24:20 - 00:19:50:03

Helen Fitzhugh

That's great and I very much recognize what you said about this. There's a lot of sketchy advice out there from people on wellbeing. That's what we're trying to do with the Evolve Workplace Wellbeing Toolkit and this podcast. We say, what evidence is there out there that is, you know, robust research based for actions that managers and people in nature can take on, on wellbeing and performance at the same time.

00:19:50:03 - 00:20:23:23

Helen Fitzhugh

So we're absolutely delighted that you're sharing that with us. I suppose if I'm devil's advocate, you've got these four super actions. Are people likely to have any difficulty or challenges in acting them? What difficulty do they face trying to put this good practice into their work lives?

Emma Russell

I think one of the big issues is that email use is very habit forming, so we've all probably got used to dealing with our email in a particular way and we probably developed our habits initially because they felt like they were having some benefit to us.

00:20:24:00 - 00:21:02:11

Emma Russell

The problem is, is that we don't often review these kind of automated behaviours as regularly or check in with ourselves and think, you know, is this technique still working for us? Is this something that I still want to be doing? So I think that the biggest challenge for people is actually changing quite ingrained habits. We actually did a study that was published a couple of years ago, and Kevin Daniels in your group was one of the co-authors of that study, and we looked at how to change people's email habits over a longitudinal study over 12 months.

00:21:02:13 - 00:21:24:10

Emma Russell

And what we found was that there are two things that people can do that can really help them in actually actively changing their habits and that results in better wellbeing and better work performance. At the end of it, the first is to work out a plan of action. So be really clear what it is that you want to change.

00:21:24:12 - 00:21:49:17

Emma Russell

So if it's the case, say at the moment you have your email notifications turned on all of the time. The action plan might be, I'm going to turn off my email notifications, but I'm going to check in on my email at least once an hour. So you just work out a plan that suits you and is appropriate for the job and that you think would be beneficial both to your performance and your wellbeing once you've actually worked out the plan.

00:21:49:17 - 00:22:14:10

Emma Russell

The next thing is to kind of publicly declare it. So you need to make a statement of intent that that's what you're going to do. And once you've made that statement of intent, you're then much more likely to adhere to it. And it's very difficult. You obviously then need to stop practicing that behaviour, seeing it, have your plan, you need to state your plan, and then you need to start practicing those behaviours.

00:22:14:10 - 00:22:43:15

Emma Russell

And that requires quite a lot of conscious effort. So I wouldn't say change all of your habits at the same time because that will probably set you up for disaster. But if you can, then actively attempt to change one of the problematic behaviours that you think you've been engaging in and really consciously pay attention to and regulate your actions for that need behaviour, eventually it will result in a change of behaviour.

00:22:43:17 - 00:23:09:15

Emma Russell

And we would suggest that people probably want to be reviewing their work habits in relation to email relatively regularly, you know, every year or so. Just to think I'm dealing with my email in a way that's effective for me, effective for my colleagues, effective for my family, my work life balance, etc., etc.. And if it's not, think about how you can change it and then actively say that's what you're going to do.

00:23:09:20 - 00:23:38:15

Helen Fitzhugh

Okay, Well, I think I've definitely made plans before, but I don't think I've declared them publicly. So maybe that's where I've been going wrong and I need to. Yeah, need to address that part of it. Tell people I have boundaries. Here they are. 

Emma Russell

Yeah, that's I think it comes from the health literature actually. Then when you find people who are more successful at things like dieting or quitting smoking and that kind of thing, it's very much about announcing it and saying, this is what I'm going to do and this is how I'm going to do it.

00:23:38:19 - 00:24:13:03

Helen Fitzhugh 

Fascinating. Thank you. And so you've done this amazing study and it sounds really useful. I'm sure everyone who's listening will be thinking, right. How how many of those four things have I tried and what should I do next? What are you going to be working on next?

Emma Russell

In terms of my research?

Helen Fitzhugh

Yeah. Yes. Oh yes. Your email habits are hopefully fine, but do tell us if…?

Emma Russell

I'm incredibly self-conscious whenever I email anyone now because I don't always practice what I preach and the next thing that I'm probably going to be working on is, well, there's two big studies at the moment.

00:24:13:03 - 00:24:35:03

Emma Russell

So we've devised a scale for measuring problematic work, email use, and we just come to the end of a four phase paradigm of research for that. So we are just writing up now and then the other studies that we're we're just coming, coming to a close on have been looking at work, email, incivility and really trying to understand some of the causes of that.

00:24:35:05 - 00:25:02:18

Emma Russell

So we already know quite a lot about the repercussions of incivility for people's wellbeing and performance. But what we don't know so much about is why people instigate uncivil email exchanges in the first instance. So we've again, it's been a full study piece of research and we feel we've now got some fairly coherent understanding of some of the causal factors of why people are uncivil.

00:25:02:20 - 00:25:38:10

Emma Russell

So just to sort of sneak peek at what that might be is that when when people's resources are low or depleted, particularly when they are low on time resources, that creates negative emotions. And because email can be quite a speedy, immediate forum for expressing oneself, if you're feeling negative emotions and your feeling harried and rushed, that seems to be when uncivil work email behaviors emerge.

00:25:38:12 - 00:26:04:08

Emma Russell

So that has implications. Obviously for for managers thinking about, you know, are people being given enough time resources to deal with their email in an appropriate way and also ensuring that people understand if they're feeling negative emotions, particularly anger, the best thing for them to do at that point is to pause and to stop and to not send off the rapid fire email.

00:26:04:10 - 00:26:31:08

Emma Russell

So again, it's it's probably just about helping people to be more observant and aware of their trigger points and what they need to do at those times to ensure that they're not creating this negative atmosphere at work.

Helen Fitzhugh

All right. Thank you. So I think we're going to draw to a close now, but I wondered if there was any final message you'd like to share with those listening to the podcast based on your research and your experience today?

00:26:31:10 - 00:27:02:03

Emma Russell

I think the message is the email seems to be here to stay. It is an inherent part of how we work and I think therefore it's useful to try and be a bit more strategic and conscious about how we are using it. So for everyone to just spend a bit of time reviewing the behaviours that they engage in around that email and think about how could I make this more effective in the way that you would reflect on any other work task or what behaviours that you engage in is probably quite helpful.

00:27:02:05 - 00:27:33:06

Emma Russell

And I guess my top tip would be just think about your boundaries in relation to email, what you want to use it for, when you want to use it and really try and stick to those said that you feel like at least you're in control and managing what has become a very ubiquitous form of communication. 

Helen Fitzhugh

Right. Thank you so much for sharing your research with and even in just 20 minutes, I feel like I have learned so much and hopefully will put it into action.

00:27:33:06 - 00:28:02:15

Helen Fitzhugh

So thank you for that and hopefully you'll come back and talk to us another time when you've got more research on this topic. Lovely. 

Emma Russell

Yeah, thank you. It's always it's always lovely to talk about your findings as an academic, so good luck with the editing on that! 

Helen Fitzhugh

If you'd like to find out more, we'll place a link to Emma's paper in the podcast information and please do visit www.evolveworkplacewellbeing.org 

00:28:02:17 - 00:28:08:17

Helen Fitzhugh 

We look forward to seeing you next time.