I began my career in education just after the dawning of the new millennium, when reading and responding to emails involved deliberately logging on at a PC and waiting for the dial-up internet to connect. Consequently, emails might languish in my inbox unread for days – perhaps even a week. In school, communications would mostly happen in-person – general whole school announcements were collected and delivered via morning briefing, colleagues would drop by my classroom or catch me in the staff room which was a hive of activity and community. If face-to-face communication wasn’t possible, a memo might be pinned to the noticeboard or appear in my pigeonhole for me to respond to by similar means. In the main, this meant that direct communications were important, and my involvement was necessary.
Fast-forward 22 years and in the week before Easter I received 47 emails to my phone in the space of 3 hours while I was in school undertaking a visit to one of my tutees. Many of these emails were ‘send-all’ announcements or correspondence into which I’d been copied. However, even a cursory glance at each of these missives to determine whether they required a response added an additional 30minutes into my working day.
Always on duty
The ubiquitous nature of email has led to an always available culture in many different fields of work. In teaching, where there is an added emotional demand to the work, this always on duty culture is neither healthy nor sustainable (something we see in current retention rates to the profession). For beginning teachers, understanding the bounds of their new role – the difference between what is expected versus what is required – can be even more challenging as they often seek to navigate the professional workplace for the first time.
Whether we are new to the profession or old hands, our approach to emails is something we would probably all benefit from reviewing, so here are a few suggestions for undertaking an email-related health check – please know that I’m talking to myself in these too!
How can we help ourselves?
I have the following message at the end of my email signature:
I work a 0.6 FTE contract, with Wednesday and Friday being my full days of work. I may be slower responding to emails outside of these days. Due to working flexibly I may send emails ‘out of hours’ but never expect an out of hours response.
Whenever the issue of emailing out of hours comes up as a talking point on social media it reveals polarised views about whose responsibility it is to manage the flow of email traffic – the sender or the recipient?
Of course, senders can schedule to send their email within working hours, but for some people the rapid succession of pings at 8am creates a different source of stress, especially if they are a teacher with a 5-period day ahead of them and no chance to respond.
One of the benefits of my early noughties work-life was that I, the recipient, got to choose when to look at my email. Accordingly, I would usually view them when I had both time and the mental capacity to do so. And, rather like actual physical post, the expectation of wait time was baked into the system; the sender did not expect an immediate response. The obvious solution is for the software providers to come up with a delay deliver function so we can all choose when our emails will arrive in our inboxes, but until then, you may wish to ask yourself:
- Do you really need your school email on your phone so you can receive these emails at any moment making it very hard to separate your work and home life?
- Can you add a filter to your email so round-robins go to the ‘other’ inbox meaning you’re able to focus, in the first instance, on those sent specifically to you?
- Can you mute notifications, so emails don’t pop up on your computer when you’re working on other things?
- Do you set an out of office reply when it’s holiday time so people emailing you in this period will expect to wait for a response?
- If you are good at managing your email, have you allowed MS Teams/ Google Classroom/ a departmental WhatsApp to replace it in making demands on your attention and wellbeing? If so, what actions might you need to take to minimise the impact e.g. turning off notifications or muting the chat/ leaving the group altogether?
As someone who regularly responds to messages by the side of a swimming pool, when cooking, or doing the school run, I know this is really hard. Only you know the impact it has on your wellbeing and, ultimately, it is down to you to do something about it.
How can we help colleagues as individuals?
[At this juncture, I would like to make a very genuine apology to all my colleagues, past, present, and probably future, for the evident hypocrisy in these suggestions – I will try to do better.]
- Ask if the email we’re about to send is necessary
It is so easy to send an email. Too easy. How much harder it was to write notes or photocopy announcements to then put in pigeonholes and therefore how much more considered they were. Before sending, it’s always worth considering if we’d be prepared to write the email and walk to a central location to deliver it. If not, does it need to be sent at all?
- Reduce or stop cc-ing colleagues into emails
Use of the cc. function has become commonplace, a means for keeping colleagues in the loop or perhaps even covering our backs and sharing accountability. Where recipients have been cc’d (openly copied in) rather than bcc’d (blind copied in), additional email traffic is then generated by use of the reply-all function. Again, it is worth asking if you would go to the bother of printing out the message multiple times to be hand delivered to the various people you’ve copied into the email. If not, then they probably don’t need to be cc’d at all!
- Gather your emails together
Sometimes it is useful to separate out issues into different emails – it makes it easier to search a cluttered inbox or helps to thread replies. However, there are occasions where, if I’m honest, I should add my point to a draft email and then hold onto it in the full knowledge that, in just a few short moments, I’m likely to send yet another email to exactly the same people which could have been combined with the previous message.
How can schools/ institutions help colleagues?
- Develop systems that support a healthy approach to email use
IT systems that prevent emails being sent to ‘all staff’ can really help reduce distracting email traffic and ensure that they are sent to the people that really need to see them. Similarly filtering notices through an intranet bulletin board space can be helpful, although they may require admin support to ensure that key items are not lost in the noise and can be flagged if necessary.
- Develop policies that support a healthy approach to email use
Establishing a healthy culture around email use may require a whole school policy around offline periods, including establishing a delay send agreement so emails are not received in evenings or weekends. Policies also need to be created for communications from pupils and carers. For example, using central/ departmental email addresses for parents may be one way to cut down on 11pm requests for contact by 8am the next day. If this isn’t feasible, then having clear response windows that are reasonable, e.g. within 72hours, can help to manage expectations.
Self-efficacy and managing workload
Teaching is a profession where, if you let it, your work is never done. Email is just one example of our workload which can eat up time. We have a responsibility to each other in this, and need to be mindful of our role in adding to the problem. However, really, we have a responsibility to ourselves as professionals. Beginning teachers especially need to learn that there is an honourable art of being good enough. To learn this art involves developing boundaries and being clear around when and where we engage in communication about our work. If you’re anything like me, you are your own worst enemy. Perhaps it’s time to tame our emails?
Becoming a History Teacher 