Obsessively tapping e-mail ‘F9 refresh’ button every few seconds, hoarding every e-mail
2007-10-01
New research from Intermedia, the world's largest provider of business e-mail services, reveals a number of 'obsessive-compulsive' habits that are now common among office workers. According to the survey results, 57 percent of people continuously tap the 'F9 refresh' button, to check for new e-mails. In addition, 45 percent of senior managers claim to file each message neatly, with only nine percent never filing any messages at all.
The survey of more than 1,000 office workers at small and mid-sized businesses using Intermedia's hosted business e-mail service, reveals that:
- 60 percent of office workers and 50 percent of senior managers admit to regularly sending e-mails without the promised attachments, then resending moments later
- More than half of both senior managers and other employees save every message, no matter how irrelevant
- 15 percent of senior bosses have sent messages to the wrong "John" or "Mary" in their address book
- Six percent of all respondents admit abusing the 'High priority!' feature, to the dismay of co-workers
"Office workers are now totally dependent on e-mail and spend so much time in Microsoft Outlook, so it's not surprising that unusual habits have developed," said Rurik Bradbury, VP of Strategy for Intermedia.
"Luckily, outsourced e-mail - such as our hosted Microsoft Exchange 2007 service - can help to ease the consequences of some of these habits. For instance, our 2 GB mailbox size means employees no longer have to worry about deleting e-mails to manage disk space - and the improved search features in Outlook 2007 let you find important e-mails easily, without filing."
For access to the complete survey results, please contact Michael Sacks at [email protected] or (212) 827-3749