The study suggetss employees can often feel quite productive just by having cleaned out their email inbox, despite perhaps not creating any value for the organisation. (Photo: ANI)

Email is the most commonly used tool for communication and collaboration at work. Consequently, most inboxes are noisy and way too crowded. Almost 50% of the employees surveyed said they spend at least an hour a day checking emails, including 16.2% employees that spend more than 4 hours on their inboxes, according to a new research conducted by Hiver, a SaaS based email collaboration tool that improves visibility and information exchange across organisations using shared inboxes.

This survey exhibits a worrying number of employees exercising emails and how a colossal amount of time is spent by them on checking emails. More than 61% working professionals between the age of 25-32 choose to open their emails every time a new email notification appears, whereas 33% of the employees tend to check their emails every few hours.

Hiver conducted a survey in order to gauge how effectively employees working across different organisations consume emails. Among those surveyed, about 80% are working in startups and 20% are working in corporates. The survey was conducted among 450 respondents in India.  

Interestingly, while 60% of the employees surveyed agree with the need to clean their inbox time and again, almost 40% of the employees don't wish to clean their inboxes at all. Employees choose different techniques and procedures to clear their mailboxes. 32% of employees used email based filters, and about 37% employees wish to move the important events to the calendar. About 35% convert tasks into a to-do list, making it possible for the employees to use their mailbox effectively.

The report also indicates that 76% of respondents say that they read more than 40% of the mails they receive and 55% of the respondents act on every email as soon as it comes in. Given that almost a third (32.4%) of the respondents receive more than 50 emails a day, ample time is spent by them on only checking their emails.

To add to that, half of the respondents say that the maximum number of emails received are from their own organisation, either from the members of their own team or others working within the organisation. This raises the question -  is internal email communication cluttering up employee inboxes? And how is this affecting employee productivity? This finding is particularly interesting, given that employees can often feel quite productive just by having cleaned out their email inbox, despite perhaps not creating any value for the organisation.