Ravalier PhD Theis.pdf - Anglia Ruskin Research Online

299
‘wasting’ training on those who it would not benefit, and vastly improving upon their effectiveness and efficiency
within the workplace.
A second concordant area from log and interview results is to do with the use of email in the organisation.
The strongest participant reaction to issues with email regarded the over-use and over-reliance on email as the
primary source of information within the organisation, for both top-down and bottom-up communication, as well as
lateral communication among peer workers. Therefore individuals often received too many irrelevant emails,
including those not strictly for the actual recipients. Similarly, it was felt that there was an over-reliance on using
email as the primary source of communication with others in the organisation. Also along these lines the majority
of lateral communications among peers who often co-habit the same working office were done so via email. This
was despite a clear knowledge that verbal communications would be quicker and resolve issues in a more
complete way.
A third response with respect to email faced employees when they would have a period of time off from work.
When returning to the workplace after sickness or annual leave employees would have extremely large email
inboxes which take hours to prioritise and organise, and have often missed important emails which require
immediate attention. Therefore the stress of having to deal with potentially very important emails which are days
overdue is created when individuals are away from work for an extended period of time. The final stressor
associated with email was faced only by those working within ‘satellite sites’ which are removed from the heart of
the organisation. These individuals often had problems accessing the IT systems necessary in order to allow email
access. While these individuals would therefore not receive important emails to their work email addresses it