Developing communications policy is important in all walks of life, sometimes it just kind of evolves, but sometimes there definitely needs to be some ground rules.
Developing communications policies can make such a difference in many walks of life. At home you’ll probably find that a communications policy evolves all by itself, notes on the fridge under one of those magnets you bought on your vacation the previous summer, or perhaps a cork board or chalk board, “Will be late, dinner’s at the burger bar.”
Developing Communications Policy in Business
Many businesses need to have a specific communications policy. It used to very often be the old fashioned memo. That’s a great word isn’t it, memo? “Miss Jones, take a memo,” evokes memories of the good old days of shorthand notepads and pencil skirts, then the poor underpaid secretary running around all of the offices leaving a ‘memo’ on every appropriate desk. Anyway, sorry for the digression, these days of course it is a relatively simple procedure of sending an e-mail to everybody and anybody in the correct folder or list of contacts. Be warned though, it’s so easy to send an e-mail to the wrong place, and once gone, you can never get it back! Double check your recipients before hitting the ‘send’ button or you may regret it for eternity, or at least until lunchtime, whichever comes first.
Developing Communications Policy – E-mail Etiquette
One problem with emails is knowing who they are from. It’s a bit like picking up the telephone and the person on the other end saying ‘Hi, it’s me’. Ok. Now you don’t want to sound stupid or anything, or like you don’t recognize the voice if you’re obviously expected to, so you just return the salutation while hoping that the next sentence will give you a clue! Be careful not to give the game away though, and a few sentences in, when the penny finally drops say, “Oh, it’s you.”
Now, emails, you might think, don’t have that problem. You get to know who it’s come from in your inbox right. Wrong! Sometimes this works really well, if the person has the foresight to have their own name in their email address, but how about ‘chuckyface’, ‘foxylady’ or ‘fubbytucker’ – they’re all real by the way, and the latter actually received a reply once to Mr. Tucker, imagine them thinking that his first name was Fubby! One simply can’t imagine where they get some of these names from! Thank goodness for freedom of speech.
Anyway, the point is, that while your friends and even family (God help them) might recognize these rich and colorful pseudonyms, they are not really appropriate for sending more formal emails now are they? So next time you need to email your boss or your university professor, make sure that you log out and log in to a more appropriate address, or at least have the foresight to put your real name somewhere in the body of the message.
Another problem with emails is the way that the sender very often seems to expect an immediate reply. Now it may come as a surprise to many people, that not everybody has, or even wants, 24 hour access to the internet, by desktop, laptop, mobile phone or Blackberry – is there no escape? And some people don’t even check their emails daily! Sometimes they only have a look every week or so, so don’t be impatient. There’s nothing worse than checking your inbox only to find a fistful of emails all referring to the first one, “I don’t know whether you got my email yesterday/2 days ago/last week/ but…” Chill out and have some patience. If it’s an emergency, telephone!