The decision by high-street retailer Phones 4u to ban the
use of internal e-mail has highlighted the increasing productivity
losses being faced by UK businesses as a result of e-mail
overload.
The mobile phone retailer last week revealed it had become the
first UK company to ban the use of internal e-mail across its
entire business. It said the move would save each employee three
hours a day and be worth £1m a month to the company.
Phones 4U, which previously had 13,000 internal e-mails going
through its systems every week, said the move had been made in
response to the "paralysing effect" e-mail overuse can have on
working practices.
Its actions reflect increasing concern among IT directors that
storage costs are becoming unmanageable. Storage currently accounts
for about 12% of datacentre costs which will more than double over
the next three years to 26%, according to analyst firm
Gartner.
Phones 4u said maintaining individual e-mail accounts was taking
too much of the IT department's time. The company head office and
its stores now communicate by telephone and the company intranet,
which is used for ordering equipment and services.
Neil Barton, director of global consulting at benchmarking
specialist Compass, said, "A company with 15Tbytes of user data
paying £2 per gigabyte per month will be spending £60,000 a month
on storage."
The increasing volume of e-mail also has legal implications for
companies. For example, some firms have been forced to pay out
compensation as a result of libellous e-mails originating from
corporate systems.
In April 2001, ex Schroder Securities employee Julie Bower was
awarded almost £1,400,000, after an employment tribunal ruled that
she was forced to resign as a result of sex discrimination. A
number of internal e-mails were produced as evidence that helped to
show that Schroder was guilty.
Phones 4u will be able to police personal e-mail use more easily as
a result of the internal ban, said Stephen Mason, IT barrister at
St Paul's Chambers. Policing personal e-mail use is a real problem
because human rights legislation gives staff the right of privacy
at work, he said.
Phones 4u's move, which follows similar, smaller-scale e-mail bans
by Nestle Rowntree and Liverpool City Council, has already shown
positive results, said Jenna Jensen, marketing manager at the
company.
"It has really helped increase our operational efficiency - store
workers are no longer distracted by e-mails," she said. "It also
ensures people take responsibility for their actions. These days,
e-mail tends to be used less for genuine communication and more as
a tool for back-covering and buck-passing."