Employees spend over 10 hours a week drafting emails, yet less than half of them are fully read, study says

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A new study found that spending too much time on your emails might not be worth the stress. 

Productivity platform Slack conducted a study of 8,000 U.S.- and U.K.-based small business employees — and the results were telling. 

Those employees drafted an average of 112 emails each week, spending roughly 5½ minutes on each one — meaning they spent over 10 hours a week drafting emails, according to Slack's study.

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However, of those emails that are sent, only 36% of recipients actually fully read and understand the emails, according to the study.

Slack's head of UK & Ireland Deirdre Byrne said in a media statement that email "simply won’t die," even though it no longer fits some users’ purpose. 

Employees who were surveyed were asked about emails and how they feel sending and receiving them every day.  (Cyberguy.com)

"Employees at small businesses are losing a working day each week to drafting emails — which often go unread — at the expense of productive work," she said. 

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The Slack study also found that 57% of people will not read an email if it’s longer than eight sentences.

That means that many emails are going ignored. 

The survey found that employees spend over 10 hours drafting emails each week at work.  (Slack)

Forty-six percent of employees surveyed believe that email is an "outdated" form of communication — and 50% say their emails are easily clogged by irrelevant emails.

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The general opinion about using email as a main form of communication varied depending on the employee's generation, according to the study.

Fifty-seven percent of Gen Z employees said email wasn’t worth the time and energy — while only 37% of Gen X and 34% of baby boomers agreed with that statement, according to Slack. 

Employees said they have been called the wrong name on email, missed important information on email and had other issues regarding it.  (iStock)

Byrne of Slack said that although email may never fully disappear, getting away from the "tyranny of the inbox … can make a massive difference to work today."

The study, which was completed via72 Points and OnePoll, also shared other telling data points. 

"Employees at small businesses are losing a working day each week to drafting emails — which often go unread — at the expense of productive work."

For instance, 51% of the employees surveyed have been addressed by the wrong name on email. 

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And 47% of employees felt bogged down at work due to "menial" tasks like responding to emails. 

Slack's survey found that employees, on average, send 112 emails each week — spending roughly five minutes drafting each one.  (Slack)

And 36% of small business workers felt that their productivity would be positively impacted if their employer focused less on communicating via email. 

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Slack senior vice president of product management Ali Rayl said that work structure has changed over the past years. 

"We now have productivity platforms and job-specific tools at our fingertips to help us make the most of our time and talents," she said in a media statement.

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