Correct Way to Draw Attention to Emails

Question

I work in IT for a medium size distributer. We often have to make changes or inform employees of outages. So far we have been sending out global messages to every employee in the company informing them of the steps they will need to take, then informing the management team to reiterate to employees to read them.

The problem is that employees simply do not read these communications and the management team does not reiterate to them to read them. We have tried all we can think of, a few recent titles as we went though a migration.

"IMPORTANT: New Steps for Email Access"
"CRITICAL: EMAIL ACCESS CHANGES"
"Please read to prevent loss of access to email"
"Imminent email loss, please read"

We have sent these emails out over the course of ~2 months, many times sending them multiple times per week. Yet each time we perform a partial cutover we get hammered with calls, users simply stating "I never saw the email" or "I never read it."

We asked managers to distribute paper copies, to post messages on boards in remote offices. Yet each time employees say they have not seen any notices. In polls less than 10 percent said they read the message.

We are a small team so the ~200 calls we receive after EACH of the cutovers sometimes daily, causes massive issues.

Are we simply not doing this correctly? What is the best way to report changes to ~1000 employees as out current way reach. The instructions are simple, usually just "Use your email and password to login" but employees just do not read them.

Answer 1

First, a disclaimer, if such technological changes to a company's infrastructure occurs too often then there is no method to communicate such changes. Employees require stability of infrastructure; if its changed too often they will deliberately sabotage such communication, and there is not a way around that. In fact, by sabotaging they are communicating with you.

Main answer: When communicating important updates to any group size, the key is to pair the message with its content. In other words, message and content must become an inseparable pair. If a message about email access is put inside of an email account, then believe it or not, you have separated the message from its content. The proof of this comes from the results which you have so clearly said in your post. You have a consistent and large percentage of employees not receiving your communication, this indeed is a result of a fault in approach. Posting messages on doorways or pop machines etc. Is also guilty of this separation fault.

Clarification of my point: an inbox is really a messbox of miscellany. Does that sound like a place to put important information? However, at the point-of-login, the actual login screen, you have a place of convergence of message and content. It is there that login and access changes must be communicated.

Just because technology for such an approach is lacking does not mean the principle is wrong. Just because there will be many naysayers that this is an overly specific solution to a simple problem also does not prove the principle wrong.

I am only laying out the principle, specific application for different platforms such as desktop and mobile will depend on the team figuring out their unique circumstances and finding solutions.

Answer 2

You Can't

There is no perfect solution to communicating changes. I was with a SaaS company that performed a pricing change - we sent emails, we put popups in peoples' accounts, we put notes on bills months ahead of time - but still when the change came, people Had Never Heard Of It (tm) and were tripping. Most of our customers didn't provide details like phone numbers so even if we had decided spending a lot of money on calling each and every one of them (which to be honest, we would probably not do) it wasn't possible.

All you can do is:

1. Clearly go above and beyond in communicating. You did this, with emails and memos. Maybe you can think of other things - if you have a phone mail system that can put a voicemail in everyone's inbox. You could get some high level manager to agree to tell his reports in their staff meeting and ask them to ask their reports in their staff meetings and "pass it down." But in the end, each additional communication path is going to mostly hit the people who care to listen to communications, so every add will get diminishing returns.

2. Have plan for the day of. In this case, if people don't listen they don't listen, but so they don't get email for an hour - if when they show up to work there's a piece of paper on the door that says "Your email not working? Go read the memo on the bulletin board" then they really should be able to resolve it quickly. In my example, we had a script prepared for the influx of calls/emails so that people didn't waste time or give bad information in Customer Service. You could put a prerecorded message on your phone line that says "Email not working? You need to...."

In the end, the responsibility isn't all yours. If this has happened multiple times, then IMO you're fine to say "here's the email we send out to all hands N times before these happen..." It's their responsibility after that. It's unreasonable to spend a lot of time (which is money in a business) on trying to make everyone pay attention (and frankly, the more emails you send, the more likely they are to set up an email rule to dump them).

If they're not reading them - and their managers aren't bothering to do anything about that - then they don't really care from a business POV. You hear from a couple disgruntled people every time so you feel like something must be done, but apparently to them it's fine. So - it's fine. Put up some informational blockers to keep people out of your face on switchover days and move on.

Answer 3

You need to establish accountability for people receiving and understanding the message.

This accountability needs to lie with Management - each Manager needs to be tasked with getting positive confirmation from their staff that the message has been read and understood.

This needs to be tracked, either by a simple online system or a spreadsheet. Management reports need to be available so that a Senior Manager can look and see that Alice reports 80% confirmation whilst Bob is at only 20%, and take whatever remedial action is required.

I would have an escalating pattern of emails - the first 4 (say) are to the individual, if they are still not flagged as having acknowledged then the next 2 are copied to their Manager, the one after that is copied to their Manager's Manager etc. People will soon get the message!

Answer 4

Don't mess with a running system!

What kinds of changes to the email system do you HAVE to make to OFTEN inform people about email access loss ?!

You seem to literally spam them with "important, "critical" or "imminent" "threats to their email access".

Very bad habit and people become desensetized, eventually ignore.

Also, you should separate between messages about outages (put a status on the intranet and use a clear email message title like "OUTAGE FROM X TO Y date/hours") and messages about system changes (which should happen MAX 1-2 a YEAR).

Just before the changes go live, send out daily emails with a countdown to when they lose access.

Also, check the other answers about involving management and possibly using another service (like the log in or desktop) to inform people.

Again, don't do these radical system changes more than once or twice a year...

Answer 5

• Limit the emails you send per week, e.g. summarize the downtimes

• Make it selective to the circle of users affected, don't send all outages to all users

• think about using RSS or another (company specific feed system) as a feed mechanism instead of emails

• make an overview calender

• be brief and concise

• If you use exchange/outlook or another calender system, then always add as an appointment (e.g. outlook will show appointments in you calender even if they are not read/accepted yet)

After that, try to establish accountability. If somebody doesn't look at his/her calender, then the manager needs to set rules.