No form of communication in the past century has revolutionized the workplace as much as e-mail has. It’s quick, it’s compelling and, for some, it’s intoxicating. But it can also be addictive and paralyzing.

So, while e-mail was thought to be a tool for greater efficiency, companies — and advisors — are finding that, indeed, it can lead to inefficiency and decreased productivity. But there are things you can do to bring e-mail under control and make it work for you instead of against you.

It seems many of us are powerless to resist the urge to check our e-mail inboxes incessantly. The problem is that e-mail distracts you from the tasks at hand, says Trevor Hubert, manager of organizational effectiveness at Winnipeg-based Investors Group Inc. , which has developed best practices for advisors on sending, receiving and processing e-mail.

Even though you might quickly check your inbox, delete the message and go back to what you were doing, you’ve lost your train of thought and broken your concentration. It can take minutes to get back into the groove. When you consider that many people receive dozens of e-mails a day, it’s easy to understand how this form of communication can contribute to less than optimal work performance.

That’s why Investors Group launched a pilot project late last year on e-mail usage. It wanted to find out how employees handle e-mail and what can be done to make them more efficient.

The project consisted of a two-hour classroom session that looked at time management and how people can become better at dealing with e-mail.

“It’s not just about how to work through your inbox,” Hubert says, “but how do you make sure you’re not contributing to ineffective communications out there.”

Some of the best practices imparted to Investors Group employees include making sure that when they first launch their e-mail program — Investors Group uses Microsoft Outlook — that the calendar is the first thing to pop into view, rather than the inbox.

“You should focus on your day first and plan it out, rather than launching into e-mail. The inbox is a distraction,” Hubert says, noting the average person receives a new message every 11 minutes — that’s 41 e-mails a day.

Perhaps the strongest recommendation is to turn off your e-mail program while working, and check it only two to three times per day. That way, you are not continually seduced away from your work by the beep of incoming mail.

“This is a disciplined approach,” Hubert says. “For many people, it will be a journey. They might start by checking it every hour.”

When the e-mail program is on, Hubert recommends turning off all the bells and whistles that sound when a new message arrives.

“You have enough distractions in your day already,” he says.

The pilot project, which recently garnered an Award of Excellence for Investors Group from the HR Association of Manitoba, tracked the amount of time saved using this approach. On average, each employee was saving 10 minutes a day. Over the course of a year, that amounts to 42 hours, or about 5.5 workdays.

“That saving means you’re more effective when working on top priority items,” Hubert says. “And fewer distractions pull you away, so you can finish them in less time. You can go home 10 minutes earlier. That’s significant for people.”

Use a serif font

Other best practices related to sending e-mail include using a type size of 11 or 12 points, not the typical default of 10 points, which is too small for most people to read. Also, use a serif font — one with the small, decorative lines added as embellishments to the basic form of a character — because it improves readability. (A typical serif font is Times New York, while a popular non-serif font is Helvetica.)

Clarity is another key point: do not use jargon or acronyms.

“Define the acronym the first time you use it,” says Hubert. “ISD might mean information systems design to techies but it could also be instructional systems design. Never assume, if you’re going beyond your group, that recipients know what your language is.”

Hubert cautions that your e-mail account, despite having your name on it, actually belongs to your company. You should be very careful what you type in an e-mail because the contents are legally binding and can be used against you in a court of law.

@page_break@Advisors should also be aware that regulators require e-mails to be saved for several years.

Karen Mallett, partner in Civility Group Inc. , a Winnipeg-based company specializing in etiquette, says people should treat e-mail the same as phone calls.

She recommends setting up a policy to respond to e-mails within a certain time frame and sticking to it, come hell or high water. This helps build trust with new clients and maintain trust with existing ones.

E-mails should be short and polite, she says, with a maximum of three paragraphs of three to six sentences each.

“People don’t want you to go on and on. If you have more, it should be in an attachment; otherwise, it’s too much information,” she says. “Technology is not an etiquette-free zone. Don’t ramble, watch your grammar, punctuation, capitalization and flaming [typing in capital letters]. And no LOL [laugh out loud] and other technospeak if you’re older than 12.”

Rick Broadhead, a Toronto-based technology author and consultant, can empathize with those people who can’t do without their constant e-mail fix.

Stop needless copying

“The longest I can last is 15 minutes,” he admits. “I don’t feel normal without it; something is missing, even on the weekends. It’s like boiling a pot of coffee.”

He recommends e-mailers be careful about needlessly copying people on messages that don’t concern them. He especially frowns on people who hit the “reply all” button when their response is for a single person.

And, in some cases, it’s best not to send any e-mails at all. “Sometimes getting on the phone is better to sort out an issue that could take six or seven messages,” he says.

Other things to avoid include adding people to mailing lists unless you have asked them, and forwarding jokes and videos.

“Some brokers will send out monthly newsletters to their clients and assume the clients want to receive the information. Don’t ever put somebody on a regular promotional list unless he or she has been asked,” he says, noting unsubscribing from such monsters can often be a “nightmare.”

Hubert says if you’re using your inbox effectively, you should have no e-mails in your inbox at the end of the day. “Some people will gasp when they hear that, but it’s very doable,” he says.

Investors Group tracked employees’ inboxes after the training. Some started with thousands of e-mails in their inboxes; six weeks later, they showed an 80% improvement. One person went down to 22 e-mails from 1,200 after six weeks. IE