Despite a wide range of alternative methods of communicating professionally emerging in recent years, the email remains the bulwark of work communication. It does present various challenges however, as the written word denies us of the various things we use to gauge context from communication. Throw in the distance that email creates, and the possibility of rudeness trickling into our emails increases.
A recent study from the University of Illinois highlights the impact rude emails can have on us, not just in our working life but also at home. Indeed, so profound can the impact be, that it can have a negative affect on the work of our partner.
“What I found in my previous study is that email incivility—this general rudeness over email, whether it’s the tone, content or timing of a message—really stresses people out on a daily basis,” the author explains. “People who receive a greater number of negative, rude or just uncivil emails tend to report more strain at the end of their workday, which can manifest itself in all sorts of ways, from physical symptom such as headaches to feeling negative emotions.”
The latest study suggests that these impacts are surprisingly persistent, both on you, your colleagues and your family.
When email controls our life
The researchers tracked a few hundred dual earner couples at various stages of their work week, including on Monday morning and Friday afternoons. The data collected from each participant suggests that most of us are on the receiving end of rude emails more frequently during the week, but that this has a knock on effect on our performance at work the following week, when we tend to be more withdrawn.
“This is a typical stress reaction: When you are under great stress, you tend to avoid your work as a means of conserving your energy and resources and staying away from stressors. It’s self-preservation,” the authors explain.
The stress that rude emails cause us is also then passed onto our partner, who in turn also was found to withdraw from their work the following week.
“What’s really stressful about email incivility is that, unlike face-to-face interactions, emails don’t have any social cues like tone of voice or body gestures that help recipients understand the context accurately,” the researchers explain. “Nuance is lost in email—it could be blunt, it could merely be banal, it could be neutral. You just don’t know, and because of the ambiguity of the sender’s intentions, the recipients may ruminate more about it because they don’t know how to respond to it. That’s why it’s so distressing.”
Domestic strife
The data revealed that when we’re stressed out by emails at work, we’re more likely to take this stress out on other family members, and especially our spouse. This cross over is particularly likely to happen on the weekend, and if your spouse is also stressed by their own work situation then it can become easily combustible.
So how can you combat the stress caused by work email? A good place to start is with the managers and team leaders, as if they’re educated on the effects poor email etiquette has on their team, they’re less likely to engage in it themselves. This can then spread to the rest of the team over time.
The authors also believe that unplugging from work over the weekend is also a good tactic to deploy in reducing stress levels as much as possible.
“We know that email is very time efficient, but sometimes behavior that email encourages can make it unhealthy,” they explain. “If email is your major method of communication, then there ought to at least be an email code of conduct for employees. There has to be a shared set of norms to follow.”
It might also be worthwhile attempting to increase the amount of face-to-face communication you do, especially if what you’re communicating has negative connotations. Stress is high enough in the workplace, without email adding to it, so this study is a timely reminder to watch what we say in our email.
