• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, September 21, 2005

A recent survey by Information Mapping, Inc. revealed that 80% of those surveyed deem email writing skills are 'extremely' or 'very' important to the effectiveness of doing their jobs. The results also showed that approximately 65% of the respondents spend from 1 to 3 hours per day reading and writing emails, with 40% "wasting" thirty minutes to three hours reading "ineffectively" written emails.

Of the participating companies, nearly 50% had 5,000 employees or more, and more than 80% of those surveyed were of professional and managerial levels and above. Key areas within their job functions include training, documentation, information technology, human resources, general management and operations.

Among the primary challenges and issues concerning emails that the survey exposed were:

• Recipient is not clear as to what should be done or how to act on the information
• Content is disorganized
• Critical information is missing or hard to find
• Content is too long, wordy and difficult to read

Deborah Kenny, IMI's Vice President and General Manager of Learning Solutions, says "It is evident that organizations can greatly improve productivity and performance by helping employees write more effective email communications."

Read more about this study.