4 ways to increase email productivity

Email is the primary form of communication in today’s businesses, so here’s how to make your emails as efficient as possible

Communicating via email is the most popular and widely used way to discuss matters with employees and clients. A typical employee receives tens of emails per day, many of which will include attachments, documents and images which need looking over.

Because of this, a poor email system has the potential to impact employee productivity in a negative way. So how can you help make email communications more secure and efficient in your workplace? Here are 4 key tips from the experts at Syntax IT Support.

Invest in cloud software

Cloud computing software has, in recent years, become one of the most useful pieces of tech in any office. It continues to go from strength to strength when it comes to workplace efficiency. By making the switch to cloud servers like Microsoft Office or Google Apps, you’ll remove the need for bulky email servers from your office. Instead of emailing documents back and forth between employees, you can simply direct colleagues to where documents are saved in the cloud, taking the pressure off your email servers.

Introduce filtering to improve security

Online safety is a key part of workplace productivity, especially if you’re constantly sending documents back and forth. Improving your cybersecurity can reduce your risk of falling victim to malware, viruses, and hackers, especially when it comes to emails. Set up cloud-based email security to reduce the amount of dangerous spam and phishing attempts making their way into your inbox. This can also stop unwanted parties getting access to your business data, so this is a must if you often send sensitive material between employees. Over time, you can build up a whitelist of approved email addresses and contacts so you never have to scroll through unwanted spam to find the right email.

By reducing the amount of spam entering your business, you’ll lower the risk of an employee accidentally clicking on a link which contains a harmful virus.

Lighten the load on your servers

Setting up email archiving might be time consuming, but in the long run it is an effective way to take the load off your servers which are currently hosting old emails you don’t need anymore. The result of this is a lighter workload for your computers and an increased speed, saving you time every time you need to send off an important email. This will make your employees more efficient and less frustrated, because nobody likes slow computers.

Create a back up plan

Server outages are one of those workplace disasters which you never think will happen to you, until it does. And if you don’t have the necessary back up plan in place, the consequences can be dire. In fact, according to data from AXA, 80% of businesses affected by a major server disaster either never reopen or close within 18 months. On top of that, more than half (57%) of small businesses have no disaster recovery plan in place.

Make sure your business is one of the ones which has both a disaster recovery procedure and a back up system in place for if and when trouble strikes. The first step should be to set up back up MX (email) records with disaster recovery mailboxes. This makes sure that you can still receive and send emails even in the event of a server outage. These disaster recovery mailboxes are also customization. This gives you the option of choosing the best method of email storage for your business.