7 Reasons Why Internal Email Is Already Obsolete

Used excessively for nearly 30 years, internal email still appears to many as the go-to tool for everyday communication, both in our professional and personal lives. Although it has evolved considerably since its early days, it has structural limitations that hinder the agility and efficiency of teams.

What are they? This article sheds some light.

Here are the 7 reasons why internal email can already be considered obsolete:

1. Internal email: a drain on time and productivity

According to a 2017 Adobe survey, French managers spend more than 5 hours a day handling emails — internal and external — accounting for 70% of their working time.

Indeed, managing emails involves:

• sorting messages (by folder, priority, urgency level, etc.) to prioritize and organize them;
• replying to them.

The writing phase can take more or less time depending on the recipient and subject. Often, you have to pay close attention to phrasing, for the sake of formality and to avoid being misunderstood. Other times, we simply reply “yes” or “no” — for example, to confirm a meeting time.

On top of that, significant time is spent reconciling information. Even when emails are grouped by conversation, the list of recipients fluctuates throughout the exchange, creating information asymmetries. This is especially visible when the conversation revolves around a document that keeps evolving. This time spent structuring work and reconciling information cuts into our working time and limits the time available for high-value tasks.

Furthermore, daccording to a Créfac study, 43% of French employees are interrupted by an email at least every ten minutes, and 31% admit to being distracted at work as a result. These constant interruptions have a significant impact on productivity, since it takes roughly 23 minutes to regain focus on a task after an interruption.¹

2. Continuous information overload

According to a Radicati Group study, an employee receives an average of 88 emails per day, of which 73% are not directly relevant to them.² That represents a significant information overload!

Among the emails received — beyond a few spam messages — most are often email chains, internal or external, where the employee is CC’d “for your information” or “just in case.”

Yet, so as not to miss any key information that might concern them, the team member will make a point of reading each email. Classic FOMO (fear of missing out)…

The result: these countless low-relevance emails generate a significant information overload, polluting employees’ attention and often impairing their clarity of thought (what’s truly important? what’s secondary?). A constantly overflowing inbox also tends to increase mental load, becoming an (unnecessarily!) real source of daily stress.

3. An asynchronous, inflexible tool

As everyone knows, internal email is fundamentally an communication tool that is asynchronous and allows sharing information or a viewpoint with recipients. They can then respond with their opinions or reactions hours, days, or even weeks later.

Because email is generally not processed immediately, it is poorly suited to situations requiring a quick response from team members. For example, it cannot handle a real-time “urgent” request from a client.

Very often (an undeniable side effect of the information overload described above), internal emails get lost (or deliberately ignored) by the recipient, which can have a negative impact on project progress; for instance when a decision needs to be made.

As an extension of its formal and especially asynchronous nature, internal email does not support flexibility. As everyone knows, it is not possible to edit an email once sent, and the “undo send” feature remains limited. So if information was forgotten, or an email was sent to the wrong person, a second email must be sent to clarify things.

4. Information scattered everywhere

Have you ever tried, a few weeks or months into a project, to trace back all the email exchanges related to it? Between shifting recipient lists, changing subject lines, varying attachments, and different file versions, it often feels like a mission impossible…

For a simple reason: internal email is an information-sharing tool that handles interactions poorly.

In other words, as soon as an exchange involves several senders, they may, in the course of their replies:

• change the list of recipients,
• modify the nature and list of attachments,
• change the email subject itself,
• etc.

Because of these various changes, conversations tend to drift away from the original subject of the email. After a few exchanges, you end up discussing entirely different topics, with a subject line that is no longer relevant.

As a result, information and documents end up scattered across countless inboxes, with subject lines that make it impossible to find what you need. This can negatively affect communication, teamwork, and decision-making across the organization.

5. Poor knowledge retention and information accessibility

Internal email prevents organizations from capturing institutional knowledge, because it relies on a “proprietary view” of information: its content and attachments belong exclusively to the sender and recipients, not to the organization as a whole. Once the sender and recipient(s) leave the company, the information shared in that email is permanently lost.

Similarly, if a colleague is accidentally left off an email, key information may pass them by entirely. It is not uncommon for emails to fail to reach new employees because of distribution lists that have not been updated.

Internal email is therefore not ideal for offering optimal information sharing over time across the organization.

6. Limited internal communication

Although it is often the preferred tool for internal communication, email leaves certain employees out: most notably employees without a work email (also known as “deskless workers”) who, not working at a desk, do not have a professional email address.

By using internal email to relay important company-wide information, you unknowingly exclude many employees (sometimes half the company in sectors like manufacturing or retail).

And this disconnect from the frontline can lead to a sense of frustration and a lack of recognition among affected employees. The downstream effects include a drop in motivation and individual engagement, less willingness to share ideas or surface information to headquarters, and talent attrition. In short: a significant loss of value for the organization.

Read also: Should you use email for your internal communications?

7. Vulnerability to cyberattacks

Finally, studies show that email is the primary vector for cyberattacks on businesses.

According to the 6th edition of the CESIN annual barometer, 80% of French companies report that phishing was the entry point for attacks they experienced. And the consequences are real: in 2020, 58% of these cyberattacks had proven business impact.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, remote work has become widespread, reducing employees’ vigilance around security rules and increasing their vulnerability to attacks. And those attacks have multiplied. In March 2020, Barracuda Networks reported a 667% surge in phishing attacks.³

Read also: [Expert insight] The Cybersecurity Challenges for SMBs in 2021

Les Phishing campaigns are growing increasingly sophisticated, requiring heightened vigilance from both companies and employees.

Even with anti-spam software, fraudulent emails can still slip through the cracks, putting company data at risk.

Conclusion

Faced with the many limitations of internal email, more and more companies are turning to more effective alternatives. They are increasingly adopting modern collaborative tools such as instant messaging, video conferencing, enterprise social networks or the digital workplace. That’s exactly what our client Agence Bergamote did. By deploying the Talkspirit platform, they managed to reduce internal emails by 95%, and cut their customer response time in half!

True alternatives to internal email, collaborative tools like Talkspirit help energize exchanges, streamline information sharing, and boost team productivity, all in a secure environment with a high-quality user experience.

Want to implement a collaborative tool? Download our methodology guide so you don’t miss a step 👇

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¹ Gloria Mark study: “The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress”
² Gereso conference: “60 minutes to regain control of your inbox”
³ 2020 Barracuda Networks study

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Authors: Emmanuelle Abensur, Benoît Renoul