Global software company Veritas has introduced a 'No e-mail Friday` campaign to cut internal e-mail and encourage personal interaction in the workplace.
The worldwide campaign was launched three months ago by Jeremy Burton, chief marketing officer for Veritas, and applies to all Veritas marketing departments, including its South African office.
"The campaign is designed to reduce the amount of time that marketing staff spend sending around internal e-mails," says Chris Boorman, VP of marketing for the company`s EMEA region. "The idea is to force, as opposed to encourage, people to talk to one another."
Boorman believes the campaign will help the marketing staff re-discover the joys of talking to each other. "It is surprising how often we e-mail someone who is literally sitting across the office, instead of picking up the phone.
"The campaign only applies to internal communication. Business must continue and hence we allow our employees to send business-critical communications to suppliers, partners and customers. One interesting side-effect is that it allows our employees to focus more clearly on business-related communications as opposed to internal chitchat," says Boorman.
"The success of this campaign can be measured by the fact that marketing staff across the regions, between the US and EMEA, are talking to each other more regularly and not relying on e-mail as the only form of communication.
"Everything in life is about relationships and e-mail is probably the worst communication tool in the world for building relationships."
Boorman acknowledges that e-mail is a difficult habit to break. A voluntary system of fines has been set up for anyone that sends an e-mail message to another person on a Friday. The guilty party donates R1 to a nominated charity.
Each person at Veritas receives an estimated 300 e-mails per day, depending on the region and the individual, and 70% of the e-mails come from inside the organisation.
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