IT firm bans email -- will your company be next?

Photo courtesy Flickr user Oran Viriyincy

There's no question that email is the predominant form of business communication today -- it far and away displaces phone, voicemail, fax and even face-to-face communication. It's so entrenched that it sounds kind of crazy to talk about replacing it. But that's just what Atos, one of the world's largest IT firms, is doing. According to CEO Thierry Breton, the company plans to completely eliminate email as a means of internal communication within the next 18 months.

Atos employs approximately 80,000 people in 42 countries, and they will be moving to a "zero email" policy. In its place, Atos will roll out a communication policy that features three kinds of messages:

-- Telephone
-- Face-to-face
-- A new "real-time messaging" platform -- essentially, a business social network tool

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The reason for this shift in policy includes fairly traditional complaints about the effectiveness of email and the damage caused by the lack of face-to-face human interaction. Breton claims statistics such as:

-- Only 10% of email processed each day in important
-- It takes over a minute to get back to useful work after reading an unimportant message

Breton says: "Companies must prepare for the new wave of usage and behavior."

It remains to be seen if a company the size of Atos can transition away from such a ubiquitous communication tool, and if "real-time messaging" will be any more effective. There's also the consideration that email provides an audit trail and record of business decisions, and is an asynchronous communication tool, which allows people to interact at their own convenience, even during personal hours if they so choose.

Thoughts? Sound off in the comments below. [via Daily Mail]

[EffortPA]

The stupidest thing I have ever heard. Who ever came up with that, should be fired for being so out of touch with reality.

[syrik]

After the bosses have to walk down the hall a few times to find who they want to say something to they'll revert that policy. Fact is email is fast and efficient. Much faster than face to face, so much so that even if it's true that a useless email wastes 1 minute each time, it's still much faster than even a short walk down the hall or an elevator ride.

[KnowerseekerReturns]

I like e-mail because it allows me to ask questions or inform coworkers of things that they don't need to respond to right away. (And, as a bonus, it gives me a paper trail of what I have and have not said.) That way, if they are busy, they can finish whatever before they have to stop and be bothered to do whatever it is that I don't need an immediate response for.

[gadfly65]

Face-to-face communication is of little use at my job; I need something in writing that I can archive to show later that it's not my fault when problems aren't addressed. I suspect that administration at Atos is eliminating email to make it harder for their subordinates to document such things and therefore make them more vulnerable to scapegoating.

[KnowerseekerReturns]

You have a point.

[bobnjersey]

[-- It takes over a minute to get back to useful work after reading an unimportant message]
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how long will it take to get back to 'useful' work after an unimportant phone call ... new social networking interaction ... or a face to face meeting?

[KnowerseekerReturns]

Indeed. Those things require your full attention, involvement, and investment (emotional, intellectual, etc.) as opposed to reading e-mail or letters.

[mrsherman]

What would make that "real-time-messaging" platform any different than e-mail? One would still have the return to work time of over a minute after the communications. Also, how would communications with outside vendors and customers work?

[pdchapin]

I like the comment about email providing an audit trail. Some companies have found that audit trail less than desirable when they're doing illegal or unethical things.

This probably wouldn't work. People will just get another email account and use that.

[cjiannacone]

If they do this, they won't last six months before filing for bankruptcy. An all time dumb idea.