Under half of UK employees are unable to deal with the number of emails they receive every day in their inbox.
This research comes from Pure Commercial Finance, a financial advisory company that found 43 per cent of workers are not coping with the number of emails they are receiving and 30 per cent claiming they are suffering from sleep deprivation due to the overload of unread messages.
The average employee has 651 unread messages in their inbox at any time. This results in 12 per cent feeling the need to check their inbox first thing in the morning and last thing at night, with another 10 per cent saying they check their emails when they are meant to be relaxing which leads to arguments with their family.
Over half (51 per cent) of employees claim they often miss emails, and 17 per cent routinely delete ones they have never read to try and clear their inbox.
Every year, staff send emails to the wrong person, which can have serious consequences, 8 per cent have had a disciplinary due to a missed email, 6 per cent missing an email has cost their company money and 3 per cent have been fired because of a work email mistake.
Jade Thomas office manager from Pure Commercial Finance said:
This research shows how emails can be overwhelming and ultimately, take over an employee’s life. It often stops people from doing their daily job as they’re wasting too much time hunting through their inbox and replying to emails that can always wait.
We encourage members of staff to close their inbox for a few hours a day and to focus on their activity. This helps employees be more productive and minimise stress. If something was that important, then the office number is in every employee’s sign-off.
Even, one in 50 employees have accidentally sent “racy” images of themselves to clients or colleagues. Londoners have the most amount of unread emails of anywhere in the UK, with 956 in their inbox.
Pure Commercial Finance gathered these results by speaking to 2,000 UK office workers.
Darius is the editor of HRreview. He has previously worked as a finance reporter for the Daily Express. He studied his journalism masters at Press Association Training and graduated from the University of York with a degree in History.
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