An employee who earns $60,000 a year and wastes five minutes a day (dealing with version control, file formats and other document related problems) costs an organisation $635 per year in lost productivity.
Osterman Research, 2009
How much are you costing yourself and your business by behaving thoughtlessly with attachments? Email seduces us into circulating huge volumes of attachments, very few of which are really needed by the recipient, as shown by the results of our research in Figure 15.1.
This chapter covers patrolling your use of attachments as a sender to:
There are several reasons why organisations impose restrictions on attachment sizes.
Attachment dumping is the fastest way to annoy people and waste everyone’s time. These are the top seven attachment time thieves for recipients, all of which are caused by the sender:
Improving how you manage attachments both as a sender and as a recipient will help you and others recoup further time from the email thieves.
Always attach your file first, then write your email. This reduces the likelihood of another round of email ping-pong to resolve the missing attachment dilemma.
Here are four simple ways to check and reduce the size of the attachments you send to ensure you stay within the limit for transmission during working hours.
The actions outlined above increase the likelihood of your email being delivered on time and promote a more professional image by sparing you the embarrassing ‘Where is it?’ email chain/phone call.
Often several files need to be attached to single emails (for example, for board meetings, sales presentations, budget and personnel reviews). The main challenge facing recipients of multiple attachments are:
Time is then squandered by email dialogues while recipients clarify what has been sent and what is required of them.
Include a ‘Read me first’ file that lists how many files are attached and their reading order.
Five more tips to make friends not enemies and impress recipients when sending multiple attachments are:
These tips raise the likelihood of everyone reading the files properly, being better briefed and generally able to work more productively. You also reduce the carbon footprint of attachments: as there is nothing more annoying and wasteful than printing a large document only to find you needed only one page. Plus patrolling your use of attachments continues to enhance your email dress code.
The uncontrolled circulation of attachments gives rise to a number of challenges:
File sharing (either through the network or collaborative tools like Notes or Microsoft SharePoint) substantially reduces the unnecessary drain on resources, from your personal time to your server space and carbon footprint. It also increases the probability of everyone working from the correct file version and minimises the risk of a breach of compliance and security as you can control access to the file.
While attachments are not quite as vulnerable as the body of an email, they are not tamper-proof. Furthermore, the contents can still reveal hidden confidential information in the form of metadata (track changes, number of revisions, etc.). Many organisations have found themselves put at significant financial and reputational risk through employees leaving metadata in files, as outlined in the introduction to this part.
The ‘Dodgy Dossier’ incident (2002) was created through the metadata left in the UK government files. Analysis of the metadata revealed that files had been plagiarised from other non-government sources (a postgraduate thesis) and that the edits had been made to make the case for Iraq’s ability to produce nuclear weapons.
Do
Don’t
For more information on this subject see ‘A Guide to Document Comparison and Security for Corporate Legal’ from Osterman Research – www.ostermanresearch.com.
Cleaning up attachments not only improves productivity but also protects your reputation and minimises the risk of leaking confidential information.
Attachments can present a problem to those accessing their emails on a handheld email device such as a BlackBerry or iPhone, as older models often do not download and display attachments satisfactorily. This is changing. Nonetheless, it is always worth checking first with the recipient.
If the recipient is working on a handheld email device, paste just the critical part/executive summary of the attachment into the body of the email.
Microsoft Office 2007 lets you send the file you are working on directly from within the application without opening the email application. Go to the ‘Office’ button and pick ‘Send’. This will open up your email software and you can either attach or insert the file automatically.
Patrolling your use of attachments as a sender and recipient will help you reclaim further time from email time thieves, reduce your carbon footprint and further enhance your email dress code.
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