Staff do not open 40% of emails they receive: Survey

Employees do not open 40 per cent of emails they receive, claims a survey report. An average professional receives close to 180 emails every day, according to Hiver's first annual 'State of Email' report wherein the data was collated from almost 1,000 email accounts of employees from across companies.

Hiver, a leading email collaboration solution for teams, said it processed 3,00,000 email threads and 4.7 million emails for the report.

The report states that an average employee receives close to 180 emails every day and 40 per cent of them are not even opened. For emails that are opened, the reply rate is just 16 per cent.

The report on email behaviour at the workplace highlights that a widespread misuse of email has led to unwanted inbox clutter, the company said in a statement. The biggest contributor to email overload is group emails sent to shared inboxes or distribution lists (such as HYPERLINK "mailto:info@company.com"info@company.com).

The report states that 51 per cent of emails people receive are group emails. The problem is that every employee who is a part of that group receives a copy of each email in their primary inbox, the report said.

It also throws light on "irresponsible" Cc'ing which has become a standard in virtually every email for reasons ranging from keeping people updated on specific projects to account for their work with their managers. Another major contributor to the inbox clutter situation is the unnecessary and excessive forwarding of emails.

"Email clearly remains an essential and popular way of communicating, but there are a number of findings from the Hiver State of Email report that indicates that it is broken and requires a significant rehaul," Niraj Rout, co-founder and CEO of Hiver said.

"There is a disconnect in which people are sending more emails, yet opening and responding to fewer of them. The low response and read rates for Cc and forwarded emails demonstrate that while people want to use email as a collaboration tool, it was clearly not designed for it," he added.