5 Sample for Sarah
When Are Emails Used for Workplace Communications?
Electronic mail, widely known as “e-mail” or just “email,” is by volume the most popular written communication channel in the history of human civilization. With emails being so cheap and easy to send on desktop and laptop computers, as well as on mobile phones and tablets, a staggering 280 billion emails are sent globally per day (Radicati, 2017)! That’s over a hundred trillion per year. Most are for business purposes because email is a flexible channel ideal for anything from short, routine information shares, requests, and responses the length of a text, to important formal messages delivering the content that letters and memos used to handle. The ability to send a message to various audiences, integrate with calendars for scheduling meetings and events, send document attachments, and send automatic replies makes email the most versatile communication channel in the workplace.
What Are the Considerations When Choosing Email Communication?
The fact that 3.2 million emails are typically sent every second doesn’t mean that quality is a non-issue for email. Because it has, to some extent, replaced mailed letters for formal correspondence, emails related to important occasions such as applying for and maintaining employment must be impeccably well written. Your email represents you in your physical absence, as well as the company you work for if that’s the case, so it must provide the needed content and be appropriately structured and well-written.
First, ensure that you really need an email to represent you because emailing merely to avoid speaking in person or calling by phone can do more harm than good. If an email is necessary, however, then it must display the qualities listed in the previous paragraph. As people who make decisions about your livelihood, the employers and clients you email can be highly judgmental about the quality of your writing —to them, it’s an indication of your professionalism, attention to detail, education, and even intelligence. The writing quality in a single important email can be the difference between getting hired and getting fired or remaining unemployed.
Let’s say, for instance, that you get an email from a customer who has been looking for a company to do a custom job. This means they have been emailing other companies with the same inquiry. Let’s say also that your competitors offer similar services at similar prices and are similarly reviewed positively online. With everything else being equal, the quality of the email responses received may be the deciding factor for that customer. Responding to the customer quickly gives you an advantage because you show that you can get things done promptly. If your email is also well written in a professional style and error-free in every way due to effective editing and proofreading, you stand a much better chance of getting the contract.
Comparing this with another company’s email that came a few days later, with multiple writing errors in it, the customer will likely go with the company that wrote the better email. Even though the quality of communication doesn’t necessarily guarantee quality of work in the product or service a company provides, customers will assume a connection. Indeed, the quality of communication does speak to work ethic and attention to detail.
Table 3.2.1 captures some of the advantages, disadvantages, expectations, and considerations that you should consider when determining whether email is the best form of communication for your audience and purpose.
Transcript
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Transcript
To Access the Video Transcript:
1. Click on “YouTube” on the bottom-right of the video. This will take you directly to the YouTube video.
2. Click on the More Actions icon (represented by three horizontal dots)
3. Click on “Open Transcript”
Transcript
To Access the Video Transcript:
1. Click on “YouTube” on the bottom-right of the video. This will take you directly to the YouTube video.
2. Click on the More Actions icon (represented by three horizontal dots)
3. Click on “Open Transcript”
Transcript
To Access the Video Transcript:
1. Click on “YouTube” on the bottom-right of the video. This will take you directly to the YouTube video.
2. Click on the More Actions icon (represented by three horizontal dots)
3. Click on “Open Transcript”