The second week of June is national email week. We haven’t checked the local card store, but there must be a card for this holiday. Or better yet, you can send an e-card to your friends and family!

Why is National Email Week Important?

Email has become the preferred method of communication for business, and even a primary way that families keep up with each other. But many of us are weighed down by the sheer volume of emails that we receive and send every day. Additionally, since they include important information, we want to keep them forever—just in case we might need them someday. IT teams are constantly working to archive and clean out the overload just to keep servers from imploding.

How much is the volume?

Here are a few fun facts about emails:

• According to a recent survey by Harris Interactive, employees say they can only handle 50 emails a day. Once they head north of that number, most say they can’t keep up. The survey, commissioned by email provider Intermedia, questioned about 2,000 employees of small businesses. Only six percent said they could bear more than 50 emails a day.
• In a survey conducted last year, the actual number of emails received daily is well over 100, says CBS affiliate KRCG in Missouri. Kate Lauman reported that the average professional gets more than 100 e-mails every day. That’s enough to load up your inbox faster than you can clean it out!
• In a recent survey, one third of Americans say they’d rather clean their toilet than their inbox. Marsha Egan, national expert on email and author of “Inbox Detox”, agrees that a full inbox causes employees extra stress. Beyond just the stress, the overloaded inbox is expensive. Egan claims that poor email habits can cost businesses a minimum of $200 in lost productivity per employee per week.
• The Radicati Group, a technology marketing research firm, estimates about 294 billion emails are sent every day.

Experts in IT say that each employee requires an email box the size of 500MB to 2GB. Times 100 employees, you can see where the costs start to add up. The best way to curb email overload is through an established retention schedule that can keep staffers productive and minimize data stores. This is just one solution to email overload; tell us about what your company does to keep email under control!

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