Users not coping with email: survey

The survey, carried out by conference company Ark Group, looked at how people felt about email.

Among the findings, 87 percent of survey respondents thought that people had developed bad email habits, with 72 percent spending more than three hours each day using email. Nearly half of the people surveyed didn't feel that they were coping with email.

Ark Group's Suzie Stollznow told iTnews the results that stood out included the fact that 95 percent of respondents couldn't pinpoint either a specific department or individual in their organisation that had overall responsibility for email management.

Stollznow said that while email had become a primary communication tool for people, staff hadn't been trained on how to use it effectively. “People click on it every time they hear a beep -- people need basic training as part of the induction [process] on an organisation's policy,” she said.

“Recently people are starting to acknowledge there is an email issue, but I think we've got a long way to go.”

Ark Group surveyed 138 conference delegates for the survey, with respondents working at both government and private organisations, Stollznow said.