Tag: email

Work/Life Balance

I recently went on holiday abroad, taking my phone complete with school email with me.   This is one of the reasons I havent posted anything new over the last few weeks. While away I checked my email occasionally plus replied to several emails.   This got me thinking, was what I was doing wrong from a health and wellbeing point of view?

I have previously read various people writing about the need to establish a work/life balance with email often making an appearance among the discussion.    The discussion often including tales of notifications being received late into the night, or emails requiring urgent action before Monday morning being received on weekends.    Some have suggested schools should block or prevent the sending of emails in the evenings or at weekends or have suggested that teachers shouldn’t add their school email account to personal phones, adding it only on work issued phones.   

I did have a school phone for a period of time, carrying two phones, one for personal use and one for school use.   A number of years ago I handed back my school phone as having two phones added complexity and inconvenience. E.g., Having to decide which phone to use or which phone to answer? Deciding which apps were on which phone, etc. I also didn’t see the point of the school paying for a service and device while I was carrying a personal device which could happily meet all of my work requirements.    This was a personal decision and I note that I considered the data protection implications in making the decision.  For me it is also acknowledgement that I am not two people, a personal and a professional me, but am instead a single person with two linked aspects to my life, my personal and my professional life.  

The distinction between personal and professional lives is often made, for example on social media in having separate personal and professional accounts.    I have difficulty with this.   If I post something inappropriate or at least contentious on my personal account, it is all too easy to link that with my professional account and therefore my school, so what is the point in having the added difficulty of managing two separate accounts?    In the real world my professionalism can be held to account for my actions during my down, or personal time, and I cant then say “but that was my personal account” so why should social media be different?    Now there are some data protection implications here however that’s a whole other post.   Let’s for now leave that issue with the fact, if I had a separate professional account, it would identify as being me in my role as opposed to belonging to the role, an organisational unit within the school or the school itself.   As such the account would still be, to an extent, personal to me, which only adds to view that maintaining separate personal and professional accounts adds no value.

But why did I answer my emails and basically do some work when I was on holiday?    I think part of the answer lies with the fact I am quite poor at resting.   I feel at my best with a to-do list and ticking things off.    I also feel invested, enjoyment and empowerment in my role.   It is a key and important part of my life so to dip into emails for a few minutes and pick off a few tasks felt more appropriate than leaving them for a week until I returned to work.    It was a personal decision.    And in making the decision I was happy to spend a few minutes on email however I was equally happy to leave a number of emails alone, to await my return to work.    If work/life balance is what I need to achieve, answering those couple of emails didn’t feel out of balance.

That said, I do always try to balance things out so I have set up appropriate Do Not Disturb timings on my phone plus adjusted the notifications settings to ensure I am not constantly drawn to check my phone outside of my normal working hours.   I will acknowledge I suspect I look at my phone more often than I should mainly due to my social media usage and the habits I have built up, however I am currently looking at ways to help me address this including stopping using my phone as an alarm clock meaning it no longer has to be in the bedroom in the evening and morning.

And I think this is where the answer to this situation lies.    It partly lies with the school to avoid and manage emails, and other tasks, such that it doesn’t encourage the sending of excessive volumes of email, or the sending of emails at inappropriate times.   This relates to the espoused expectations of the school in relation to email and communications, plus to the wider culture and climate within the school.   But responsibility also lies with the individual to ensure they do not contribute to the issue in their sending of emails to others, plus they consider the practices that work best for them, including if this involves answers a couple of emails while sat by the pool or looking out towards the sea on holiday.

And as a final conclusion, I did enjoy my holiday which is what matters!

Less email filtering?

Cyber security is often thought of as a defensive exercise.   It is often thought in terms of preventing threats gaining access however in considering malicious emails I wonder whether there might be a slightly different way to think about it.

My concern is this;  If in our cyber defence we do a really good job and prevent malicious emails, such as the all too common phishing email getting through, then we could potentially create a work force who are unfamiliar with phishing emails.   Our defences may create a situation such than when a phishing email eventually does get through, and this is pretty much guaranteed, the recipients are ill prepared to identify it as malicious and respond to it accordingly.   Our defences create a more vulnerable user base. I also would suggest that an expectation of 100% successful filtering if naïve; Our filtering solutions are simply not that good combined with the fact cyber criminals are constantly adjusting their approach to bypass common filtering solutions and approaches.

Now to be clear, I am not proposing no defence against malicious emails.   What I am suggesting is that having filtering which is at least slightly porous, allowing some malicious emails through may be preferable in developing users who are more aware.

I suspect some may argue that awareness is developed by training and awareness campaigns, etc, however I would suggest that these are all proxies for exposure to the real thing, and for learning to deal with the real thing. Again, I am not saying that we shouldnt have any awareness training, in fact I am a firm believe in the critical importance of awareness training, I am simply suggesting that training is not as effective as real life events.

The challenge with the above is the level of porosity.   As I suggest, not porous enough and the user base may be ill prepared however equally defences which are overly porous will simply expose users to a great volume of risk through a greater volume of malicious emails.   Once again the challenge relates to achieving balance and to managing risk.

eMail, not another email!!

We all love to use email as it allows for such easy communication.   I can communicate information to everyone in the school, or to a specific department or to an individual staff member at the touch of the Send button.   I can have a discussion with another member of staff without having to seek them out across campus and allowing for their timetable.   I can get a thought or question which arises in my mind down and fire it off for comment and the thoughts of others independent of time and the availability of the people I invite to comment.

Isnt email wonderful?

Email is convenient but with convenience comes a problem.   It is easy to send an email and consider the information communicated however it would be fairer to consider the information as just “sent”.    I tracked a recent global i sent including a newsletter to see how many people clicked the link within the email.   It turned out that only around 10% of people to which the email was sent actually went on to follow the link.    On a similar but more important email this number increased to around 20% however that still represents a minority response.

It is also convenient to send emails at all times including weekends and evenings however does this come with the expectation that the person will read and action at midnight on a Friday?    Would we pick up the phone in the absence of email at midnight on a Friday to convey the same information?

Convenience also steps in with regards who we send our emails to.   We wouldn’t stand up and announce some information at school briefing or via the PA system however due to the convenience of distribution groups we feel it is acceptable to send via email to everyone.   We also adopt a just in case mentality so rather than sending to the department and a couple of other users we might send to the whole school as it may be useful to everyone.

Email is also a one way communication system however it is often treated as two way in the same way as a phone call.   The difference is that in a phone call you can stop someone mid way and ask for clarification.   You can question what a person means.   In an email the person reading the email has to interpret the content with no additional guidance from the sender.  Even if they send an email back to ask for clarification the originator of the message has to interpret the clarification request.   As such email chains are so very open to misunderstanding and in some occasions to fiery exchanges.   I have noted a number of instances in email table tennis during my career and am ashamed to admit that I have on a small number of occasions been party to the exchanges.

Email like most technologies has its advantages however we live in a world of balance and therefore there are also some drawbacks.  Users need to be aware of these drawbacks and conscious of their use of the technology and its implications.

My main tips for email would be:

  • Consider is email correct:  Consider what you want to communicate and if there will be any need for discussion.  If discussion is needed then maybe its time to pick up the phone or arrange a meeting.
  • Consider email info as sent but not communicated:   Realize that not every email is actually read and therefore if the info is critical some sort of checking or follow up will be required.
  • Use delayed send:   In outlook you can set when you want an email to be sent at some point in the future so you can write your email now or at midnight however schedule it to send on Monday morning at a more reasonable hour.
  • Consider who you need to send to:  Avoid using the whole school global distribution group unless it is an emergency.   Try to send to the smallest group possible rather than using the scatter gun approach, and create your own groups in Outlook in order to help you manage this.

I don’t see email going anywhere however we need to manage its use better.   To do this it is about every individual thinking more about the cost of their convenience.

 

 

 

Not another email!!

During the day things can be hectic and busy which leads to a focus on getting the things done in school that need doing and leaving some other things until later.    One of these things can be communication and in particular email communication.    In addition to this we quite often identify things we have forgotten to deal with or come up with great ideas when we are relaxed and no longer in work mode, as normally happens at the end of the day or on weekends.    This again quite often involves email and sending out last minute reminders or requests, and on sending out proposals or posing questions all via email.    Through this we can see large volumes of email being sent at hours outside what would normally be considered normal working hours.

If you are anything like me, when your phone or tablet bleeps to inform you a new message has arrived we invariably look at it.   This is independent of whether this happens during the school day or outside the school day.   The reaction could be described as learned behavior.       Having read the message you will then react to it with some reactions being positive and others not so positive.   This can then colour and impact on your time, which technically should be non-work time.   Recently I found myself not sleeping very well having read a particularly troubling email sent to me late into the evening.   I am convinced the reason for my inability to sleep being that my mind was running both consciously and subconsciously through the issue in hand and all the possible actions which could be taken to resolve things.   All this meant was that I did not enjoy the time I had available to me outside work and I arrived at work more tired than normal the following day albeit with a more detailed picture of my possible options in relation to the issue at hand.

We can try to address this through self control and choosing not to look at messages however after your phone has bleeped five times in an evening I would challenge most people to have ignored the phone.

I am conscious of the ever creeping of work into my home life so have been trying to do something about it.   I cannot control what and when others send me email however I can control my actions and hope that by doing so it will encourage others.

My current approach is to write my emails in the evening and on the weekend when I need to but to save them to draft rather than sending them.   I then send them in the morning of the next working day.   I do note, however, that were issues are emergencies, and by description this should be few and far between, I do engage in emailing out outside of working hours.

How do you manage email?