7.4 Research Spotlight

Depending on the line of work and the deadline of a project, Forbes.com indicates employees should check their emails in 45-minute intervals (Morad, 2018). The discussion around how often an individual should check their emails is still debated considering, frequency expectations could be seen as too rigid and interfere with the employees’ personal lives. In addition, if the expectations are too rigid, employees have the possibility of experiencing burnout and low productivity. Paulise (2024) from Forbes.com mentions research suggesting employees should check emails 2-3 times and not more to reduce stress and improve employee well-being.

Even if the individual cannot reply to the email at the time of receiving it, they should reply by acknowledging its receipt and indicate an appropriate time to respond to the email. This approach is essential if the reader may reply with an emotional response. Asking for ample time helps both parties to be on the same page and provides time for the reader to respond in a less reactive way.

A recent meta-analysis of 25 years of research on email use in the workplace published in Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology (Russell et al., 2024) suggests four actions to facilitate optimal work-email activity while supporting employee wellbeing (p. 96):

• Communicate and adhere to boundaries for work-email access (for example, use automatic replies when out of office and delay sending after hours).
• Regularly triage work-email (for example, regularly check and organize email by filing, responding, or deleting messages).
• Send email with high relevance/criticality to work (for example, use evidence-based information and utilize work email for professional use only).
• Use civil or considerate actions towards others when sending work-email (for example, keeping messages to the point, following organizational guidelines on the use of ‘cc’, and when to use other communication modalities to reduce uncertainty).