Is E-Mail Evil?

I just got done reading a brief article in Fast Company magazine that talked about the miscommunications that can occur via e-mail. A study has shown that people will generally perceive an e-mail message in a more negative fashion than intended.

Last week at my employer (a county government) everyone in the IT division was required to attend a training session on maintaining a professional workplace. Some of the topics were fairly routine (cultural awareness, harassment, etc.) but they also touched a bit on communications. As noted by the study in Fast Company, e-mail can easily be misinterpreted because tone and body language are lost. More than once I’ve had someone take an e-mail in the wrong way. The presenters from HR suggested that a phone call would often be better than e-mail, and a face-to-face interaction would be even better still. Obviously that’s not practical for all communications, but it seems to be sound advice.

The question was asked, when is e-mail appropriate? The only definitive answer was to keep it short, just the facts, and not try to inject humor or emotion for fear of it being misread.

As a public agency, another issue which came up is that of disclosure; anything sent via e-mail could potentially end up in the newspaper if it became involved in some public investigation. We were cautioned to think twice before sending, and that if we didn’t want something public, to avoid sending the message at all.

Have we reached a point where e-mail is only good for emotionless directives? Is it to be a “Handle With Care” type of communication, subject to warnings from the lawyers?

Is E-Mail Evil?