Instructor Blog #2: Email

Every day when I get to work in the morning I look forward to reading my emails. I am not looking forward to the work they may delegate to me; I am looking forward to laughing at how terrible the majority of the emails were written. One thing I will say though, the higher up the chain of command the sender is, the better written the emails are. I look at some of the emails written by people in my group and I wonder how they ever get any responses. I can’t even begin to fathom how so many people seem to forget the subject to an email. How do you forget that? The subject is the second thing you fill out, and it is the key to your email getting read. If I receive an email without a subject it is the last email that will get read. If the person writing it could not take the time to fill out one line then they can wait until I respond to everyone else who added a subject. A missing subject just starts an email exchange on the wrong foot. Also, over half the emails I see don’t have a greeting or conclusion. An email without a greeting or conclusion makes the sender seem like they don’t care about work or the email they sent. However, as far as I am concerned both of these errors are pretty small in comparison to spelling and grammatical errors in emails. One email I saw today I did not even know what the person was asking. I could not believe my eyes when she actually got a response that was not asking her to try again. For as formal as emails should be it seems that many people still regard them as an informal medium. For this reason, I believe that giving emails a high priority in the workplace will get you noticed and will get you faster results and responses.

I feel email etiquette is very important now-a-days. It seems people use email more than picking up the phone and calling the person. I too have worked and seen poorly written emails, as most people that have responded above me have. Sometimes, the subjects were very misleading and then I open it, waste my time reading the email, and it has nothing to do with me. This gets especially annoying when you have over 100 emails everyday, as noted in the blog. Poorly written emails were also a big problem. I am not the best at writing, (I hope to improve on this during this class), but I still know the basics and can catch mistakes easily, just not in my own work. Therefore, even the higher management were making silly mistakes, misspelling the easiest words and having sentence fragments to the point where the sentence doesn’t even make sense. I don’t know about everybody else, but when I read poor English, even swearing, in a serious email, I just start thinking that the author really doesn’t know what he/she is talking about and I don’t take the email serious.
My last point is about arguments in an email. I have read about a whole divorce taking place, and I really didn’t care about it, but every time something happened, email was used to gossip. The argument got old real quick, and eventually the person sending the email was reprimanded rightfully so. With this being said, I understand email is a serious business and I agree 100 percent with the blog.

Andrew Garland

Everyone seems to have the same views on emails. I agree with the most of them. One of the first subjects talked about was the subject line. I think the subject line is SO important because I tend to get junk mail and if anything doesn't have a subject line and I don't recognize the email address that sent it, I discard it and delete it immediately fearing that it could be a virus. This could be bad for both me and the person that sent it if the email held important information. Bottom line, ALWAYS fill out the subject line and make it worthwhile so the person reading it has an idea of what they are about to read.
Secondly, I think that email etiquette is very important. It is very important to know what type of language to use depending on who you are talking to. I tend to make sure that I keep every email too formal when emailing people I don't know. I usually get a response back with "just call me Tarri, not Mrs. Brickler" or something of that nature. I then know where our email conversation boundaries are. It’s better to be safe, then sorry.
Lastly, a simple email introduction and closure goes a long way. When I receive emails that don’t start out “Dear Jason, or Jason-” it gives me the impression that the email isn’t very personal. The person didn’t take the time to fill out my name and that could mean it is just a generic email sent out to everyone. If an introduction is included, it makes the email seem more personal and I am more likely to pay closer attention to it. The same argument can be made for conclusions. They are especially necessary when you are emailing somebody for the first time. I may not know who packerfan@hotmail.com is, but if you include “-Tom-” at the end then I know who it is.

When reading this instructor blog, I can’t even begin to emphasize how true the content is. When I started my internship at Caterpillar Inc. this summer, I even had to take a specific online training class just on emails. The class included about a half hour lecture on the importance of proper emailing at work followed by s twenty question assessment. When I started to read this blog, I felt like I was having dejavu. Though the online class training at Caterpillar was a little more extensive than this blog, all of the ideas were identical. The toughest part about our society today when getting started in the workforce is being able to change the way we communicate. All of our lives we have been sending emails, IM’s and text messages carelessly and casually. Once a person starts working, he or she must learn how to communicate on a different level then they are accustomed to. Especially in today’s world where legal action can be taken for any miscommunication or slip-up, such as the examples explained in the blog, one must be extremely careful about emails in the workplace. This blog certainly hits the nail on the head when conveying the seriousness of correct communication in today’s society. Now aside from all this seriousness, don’t let this intimidate you. For instance, my boss is an older man and typically with older people, they are a little behind with today’s technology. This means mistakes with email format or spelling errors do occur but we (the employees) don’t think any less of our boss because he makes mistakes. We all do. The point I’m trying to make is that as an employee, you just need to pay attention to what you are typing. Stop, think, then proofread before you send and this should never become an issue.

I have experienced some similar issues regarding emails in my past internships. Based on the hours of training and policies that I had to go over in the begining weeks of my internships, I know that all of the things written in the blog are true. In fact, the training at my last company, and the one I am interning at now, basically stated the exact same thing. Emails within the professional world are not something to be taken lightly. It is very important that they are clearly written and titled to minimize confusion and maintain credibility. And most important, they should not be written in a way that might insult or offend anyone. Even a minor joke that might seem harmless to one person can be very offensive to others, and result in serious consequences. Every single email that was ever sent within the company was saved and could be used as incriminating evidence.

Last summer, I was interning for a very large company. There were a lot of other interns at this company, who would often socialize over email, and even use work emails as if they were instant messages, sending emails back and forth all day long. And, the content of these emails was not always appropriate for work. People would send emails taking about recent parties and how certain people got drunk, and what they ended up doing. Whenever I received an email like this (seeing how I was an intern and was included in the intern email distribution list), I would just think to myself "seriously? Are people really dumb enough to send these kinds of emails through work?" But, they were. To my knowledge, none of these emails had ever been viewed by anyone other than an intern, so no one had ever gotten into any kind of trouble for sending them. But, just imagine if some other employee had seen them and was offended, or if someone in HR found them.

I totally agree with you about how our generation uses email so casually and informally. I believe that email is going to become even bigger in professional world in the coming years than it is now. I feel this way because technology is always increasing and it someday will allow for business to be done without even communicating with each other or signing agreement papers. I think your lists of helpful email tips have set accurate guidelines for the way that emails should be sent not only in an academic setting, but a professional one as well. I have had some personal experience with how email can be beneficial and also how it has backfired on me.
Last summer I was working in the human resources department at an insurance company and part of my job was to send my reports to upper management and the CEO when I complete with them. The CEO emailed me back very shortly after he had read my report and was very pleased with my findings. He used informal language and incomplete sentences to get his point across but it was relaxing to know that even CEO’s can use informal language and be relaxed through email. Another time I wasn’t so lucky. I emailed a manager in a different department and addressed her as Mrs. Kelly So and so, when it was really a man and his name was Kelly as well. He proceeded to tell my boss and my boss explained that I was an intern so it all worked out.
I definitely agree with the statement of think twice before you send anything because as we have all seen over the past decade numerous scandals have been uncovered through email. I think this class is more meaningful than anyone I have taken yet because of its ability to relate to real world experiences and preparation for our professional lives. As students we sit in our calculus classes and our communications classes where we learn things we may never need to now or deal with again. But things as simple as sending proper and professional emails are vitally important to our personal success in the future.