珍惜人际情感 远离电子邮件

Email can be a great tool in helping us multitask and set our own timetables for communicating with friends, family and co-workers. But lately, I've noticed a growing email backlash.

I have written before about companies imposing 'no email Fridays' or weekends to encourage more face-to-face and phone contact between co-workers. Lars Dalgaard, founder and chief executive of SuccessFactors, a California human-resource management software concern with nearly 1,000 workers, recently sent an email to employees banning in-house email for an entire week.

Mr. Dalgaard objects to email partly because people use it to avoid talking with others, or to hide negative or critical messages or information from co-workers, sometimes by hitting the 'bcc' button. His goal in setting the ban is to get employees 'authentically addressing issues amongst each other,' he told employees. So far, the edict is working. People are grabbing their phones or walking to each other's desks to talk, Mr. Dalgaard says. Employees still contact each other online via in-house social networks.

In targeting email, Mr. Dalgaard is trying to root out long, time-consuming, one-on-one email strings, he says. Other email critics say heavy emailing hurts productivity by distracting people and destroying their focus.

In related research, email may make users feel less responsible for telling the truth. A study in a recent issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology found that people are more willing to lie when communicating via email than with pen and paper, and feel more justified doing so. This was true regardless of whether the writers were told their falsehood would be discovered by others.

I am having a little email backlash of my own. I used to be a heavy user of email to communicate with my adult stepchildren and extended family, who are scattered across six states. But I have noticed we are all using email less lately. Increasingly, an email seems to have less emotional significance than other modes of communication, from a phone call to an iChat talk.

Readers, how well does email work for you in communicating in depth with someone? How much do you rely on it at work?