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| Email
Communication in the Workplace
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We live in the era of globalization and informational technologies.
Information is the greatest treasure and the quicker you get
information, the more successful you are. This is especially
true if we speak about great companies and firms. Specific
information which is delivered in time can guarantee a successful
contract and so profit for the company.
Nowadays the best way of communication in the work place is
email communication and it is even difficult to imagine how
much time we would have lost if we had not this medium for
conducting day-to-day communications in the workplace. Email
is the exchange of messages with the help of telecommunication.
E-mail is one of the greatest advantages of Internet and the
most popular one. Email makes a great percentage of the total
traffic in Internet. “E-mail can also be exchanged between
online service provider users and in networks other than the
Internet, both public and private” (Ziv, 1996).
Among the advantages of email communication are the following:
you save your time and money; you can send not only a text
message, but also graphic images and sound files, as attachments.
You can be sure that the addressee has got the message if
you use delivery notification. This option is very useful
and even necessary in the workplace. The work process is based
on contacts with other firms and companies and so it is very
important to exchange information quickly, to get necessary
information in time and to have a possibility to contact the
client any time it is required. Only email meets all these
requirements.
Email is easy-to-use and it really matters for prominent workers.
It can be sent to a list of people or to a single person.
An email reflect allows to manage a shared distribution list.
“Some mailing lists allow you to subscribe by sending
a request to the mailing list administrator” (Weisband,
1995).
Email is an efficient and cost-effective medium to inform
people. Of course, people who work can not hide their addresses
or addresses of their company. The way to get rid of SPAM
or to reduce it is the usage of email filters, which help
to cope with unnecessary messages. It is not necessary to
check all SPAM boxes but workers can inspect those which seem
interesting for them and so get useful information even from
unknown people.
Sometimes workers can face the same problem – their
messages could be regarded as SPAM and so wouldn’t pass
the filters. To cope with this task, the subject and the content
of the message should be interesting and clear. Workers should
use mailing lists, BCCs, Undisclosed Recipients and other
such things if they want their message to be read. Plain text
should be used. It is noticeable that HTML-messages usually
end in a SPAM box. Another point is the presence of a PGP/GPG
key or registered certificate that can be verified. Registered
certification makes your message more reliable. Along with
this it can also create complications in the workplace. The
greatest problem, which has always existed, is SPAM and SCAM.
In most workplaces email has replaced much telephone conversations
and face-to-face interaction, as well as written memos. Email
has become an important medium of workplace communication
and even now its influence is broadening. So, email is characterized
by the following features: speed, multiple addressability,
processing, routing, which make it the best way of workplace
communication.
Speed presupposed the distribution of the messages in a relatively
short period. It is possible to arrange a meeting quickly
and without the knowledge of other interested people. Email
communication guarantees more privacy than written letters.
Multiple addressability means that the person can contact
groups of people within one organization or firm or outside
it. Just in a few minutes your message is delivered and the
information is distributed not to one individual but to a
group of individuals. “Processing is the ability that
a receiver has to store and manipulate a message before sending
it on” (Brigham, 1997). It is possible to add or delete
some comments making a neutral letter or, on the contrary,
making a politically explosive one. Such combinations depend
on your aim. Routing gives the sender a possibility to control
the destination of the message. “This feature enables
senders to send slightly, but significantly, modified messages
to different groups of email users” (Gattiker, 1992).
This option is very important in the workplace.
To sum up, nowadays email communication is the most efficient
way of workplace communication. It saves time and money, while
working effectively, and this factor makes email the most
profitable medium.
Works Cited:
1. Brigham, M., Corbett M. J. (1997). E-mail, power and the
constitution of organisational reality, New Technology. Work
and Employment 12, 1: 25-35. Retrieved April 18, 2007, from
http://www.email.com/power/power.html
2. Cerf, V. (1997). Guidelines for Conduct on and Use of Internet.
Technology Journal, 35. Retrieved April 18, 2007, from http://www.isoc.org/policy/conduct/conduct.html.
3. Gattiker, U. (1992). Technology-Mediated Communication.
Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. April 18, 2007, from http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0360-0572(1996)22%3C213%3ACNASNC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-B
4. Martin, J. (1993). There’s Gold in Networks! Searching
for Treasure in all the Wrong Places. FYI, 10. Retrieved April
18, 2007, from ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1402.txt.
5. Rinaldi, A. (1987). The Net: User Guidelines and Netiquette.
Internet Press, 35 (14). Retrieved April 18, 2007, from http://www.fau.edu/rinaldi/net/index.htm.
6. Weisband, S. P., Schneider S. K., Connolly T. (1995). Computer-mediated
communication and social information: status salience and
status differences. Academy of Management Journal 38,4: 1124-151.
Retrieved April 18, 2007, from http://www.fau.edu/computer/communication/net.html
7. Ziv, O. (1996). How using email can reflect technological
and organisational change. Computer-Mediated Communication:
Linguistic, Social and Cross-cultural Perspectives. Amsterdam:
John Benjamins, 243-263.
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