Tech Firm Implements Employee ‘Zero Email’ Policy
December 12, 2011 by Kevin Michael Gray
So you have heard of companies banning personal cell phone while at work... well today's featured story is about Atos (a European company) that recently banned internal company emails. Atos claims that the amount of time that an average employee wastes checking and responding to emails far exceeds the value which is received from the back and forth style of communication. What are your thoughts? Do you think that eliminating internal emails could help boost internal productivity? Tweet about it @seedingideas
You’ve got mail–not. Employees of tech company Atos will be banned from sending emails under the company’s new “zero email” policy.
CEO Thierry Breton of the French information technology company said only 10 percent of the 200 messages employees receive per day are useful and 18 percent is spam. That’s why he hopes the company can eradicate internal emails in 18 months, forcing the company’s 74,000 employees to communicate with each other via instant messaging and a Facebook-style interface.
Caroline Crouch, a spokeswoman for the company, told ABC News the goal is focused on internal emails rather than external emails with clients and partners. Atos has already reduced the number of internal emails by 20 percent in six months.
When asked how employees have responded to the policy, Crouch told ABC News the overall response “has been positive with strong take up of alternative tools.”
Breton, the French finance minister from 2005 to 2007, told the Wall Street Journal he has not sent an email in the three years since he became chairman and CEO of Atos in November 2008.
“We are producing data on a massive scale that is fast polluting our working environments and also encroaching into our personal lives,” he said in a statement when first announcing the policy in Feburary. “At [Atos] we are taking action now to reverse this trend, just as organizations took measures to reduce environmental pollution after the industrial revolution.”
Atos had revenue last year of of EUR 8.6 billion, or $11.5 billion, and has offices in 42 countries, according to the company website.
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