It's not uncommon for Chris Frank to get bombarded with as many as 200
e-mail messages a day at work.
But, says Frank, president of Greater Bakersfield Chamber of Commerce,
"you learn how to scan. If I don't know the author or identify with the
subject -- if it doesn't grab me immediately I just delete it. I can go
through my e-mail quite quickly that way."
The term "e-mail delete mode" is quickly becoming part of business as
virtual letters bloat company e-mail inboxes.
"If you add up all the time spent surfing the Internet and reading
e-mail it's just an intense amount of time that slips by each day," said
Rick Kreiser, president of Carney's Business Technology Center.
"I call the Internet (and e-mail) the giant time-sucking vortex."
Still, Kreiser, Frank and many other company executives say that e-mail
is one of the most important technologies to the world of business today.
"Without a doubt, local companies that are embracing e-mail are finding
that they are working smarter and reducing operating costs," Frank said.
Bakersfield's Chamber of Commerce is a good example of what can be
achieved.
Over the past two years the chamber has reduced its cost for postage by
$15,000 through the use of e-mail, Frank said.
But, e-mail does have a darker side -- a side that has company
employees chained to their computers reading a landslide of computer
messages, which can take time away from more pressing tasks.
"It is not uncommon for an employee even at the smallest company to
have more than 50 e-mail messages each day, said Eytan Urbas, vice
president of marketing for Mailshell.
"Employees today are sifting through literately piles of e-mail," Urbas
said. "It's sort of like a chronic back pain that we've learned to live
with."
Mailshell is a Santa Clara-based Internet company that provides clients
with e-mail solutions.
It's a classic trade-off: Instant communication at a fraction of the
cost of telephone and traditional postal service versus a technology that
buries employees in work and removes the human component from face-to-face
conversation.
"Yes, we have traded off a significant amount of personal interaction
by using e-mail, but ... we feel that the advantages far outweigh the
disadvantages," said John Hester, Aera Energy's production services
manager.
About three years ago, Bakersfield-based Aera decided to eliminate "all
paper memos," by expanding e-mail access to the majority of the company's
1,100 employees.
The goal of eliminating paper memos at Aera Energy has been achieved,
Hester said. Today, California's largest producer of crude oil has almost
2,000 e-mail accounts that include employees and contractors.
The company generates an average of about 40,000 e-mail messages a day.
"In (theory) we could continue to function and fall back on alternative
methods of communication if e-mail was no longer used," Hester said.
"However, in practice, ... e-mail has become such a significant piece
of our business that there would be a negative impact if we let it go
down."
For more than two decades, Carney's Business Technology Center has
provided an array of business products and services to small and
medium-sized companies throughout Kern County.
Carney's president has had a front row seat for the explosion of e-mail
in the workplace.
"The problem has always been that companies struggle to manage the
technology properly," Kreiser said.
"Some of it is so unnecessary. In fact, I've had employees who would
send three or four (inner-office) messages back and forth via e-mail to
achieve something that could have been done in 30 seconds verbally."
Besides coping with increasing volumes of e-mail messages, companies
and employees must also deal with privacy issues when sending and
receiving personal e-mail messages at work.
"There's absolute abuse happening -- no question," said Holly Culhane,
owner of P*A*S Associates -- a local human resources consultant.
The problem, Culhane warns, is that companies can be legally
responsible for sexually explicit material, discriminatory messages and
other "inappropriate" e-mails such as off-color jokes sent by employees on
company equipment.
Kreiser agrees, adding that business owners must protect themselves
from a system which is based on trust.
"We don't eavesdrop unless we suspect a problem," Kreiser said. "But,
our policy clearly stated that we have the opportunity and the right to
look at what is sent from our office."
No one at Carney's has been terminated for inappropriate use of e-mail.
At Aera Energy, that have been "rare" instances of misuse of e-mail,
Hester said.
"In practice, employees basically are given one warning for
inappropriate use of the system," he said.
"There has been situations, compounded with other issues, that have led
to disciplinary actions taken against employees. But, they have been very
rare."
