By Amy Dron – Inbotiqa, Corporate Communications

The negative effects on managers of keeping up with email traffic were laid bare in recently published research from Michigan State University (MSU). In an article on the institution’s website, “Is Email evil? Bosses are getting boxed in by their inboxes”, lead researcher, MSU management professor Russell Johnson, discusses the research and how distractions from email interruptions impact managers, their productivity, and their ability to lead. Effective email management is at the heart of our Inbotiqa YUDOmail platform so we read the findings with great interest.

Published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, the MSU research ‘Boxed in by your inbox: Implications of daily e-mail demands for managers’ leadership behaviours found that while employees spend more than 90 minutes per day recovering from email interruptions, managers are similarly afflicted but with further-reaching implications. Johnson, an associate professor in the Department for Management in MSU’s Broad College, describes how recovering from such interruptions not only means managers fail to meet goals. It also leads to neglect of their responsibilities as managers meaning that subordinates lack the leadership behaviour they need to thrive.

To compound matters further, the research also found that managers recover from feeling overwhelmed and unproductive due to email demands by limiting their leader behaviours and pivoting to tactical duties; and that this action is strategic and intentional as it makes managers feel more productive. Employees and thus outcomes suffer from a lack of leadership behaviour, which Johnson describes as relating to motivating and inspiring subordinates, conveying why work tasks are important, and talking optimistically about the future. He went on to say that there was a strong correlation between leader behaviour and employee performance.

At Inbotiqa, we recognise and help clients realise the benefits of effective email management, seeing dramatic reductions of 55% in the time spent on email management once our Intelligent Business Email platform has been implemented.  Turnaround times are reduced through clear task allocation and performance management, while analytics reduce email volumes by eliminating unnecessary system-generated emails while identifying root causes of chaser emails.

Valuable academic research like that produced by MSU highlights the range of negative effects resulting from ‘email overload’, both direct and knock-on. With the advances in effective email management and analytics that YUDOsmart brings to the Inbotiqa platform, we’re looking forward to further contributing to reducing email traffic and the significant negative effects such high volumes can have on our clients’ managers, teams and productivity.

Citation: “Boxed in by your inbox: Implications of daily e-mail demands for managers’ leadership behaviors,” Christopher C. Rosen, Lauren S. Simon, Ravi S. Gajendran, Russell E. Johnson, Hun Whee Lee, and Szu-Han (Joanna) Lin. Journal of Applied Psychology, Sep 17, 2018. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/apl0000343.