RESEARCH

This article reports that some recent data in a survey conducted by Information Mapping Inc. (IMI) would bolster the good/evil notion. Findings revealed that 80 percent of those surveyed deem electronic mail (email) writing skills as "extremely" or "very important" to their job effectiveness. The results also showed that an excessive amount of time is spent reading and writing emails, with approximately 65 percent of those surveyed spending from one to three hours per day reading and writing email. IMI reported that nearly 600 individuals took part in the survey, representing financial services, government, insurance, consulting, telecommunications, and health care organizations. Nearly 50 percent of the participating organizations had 5,000 employees or more, and more than 80 percent of those surveyed were of professional and managerial levels and above. When survey participants were asked how much time during an average day was wasted reading ineffectively written emails, 34 percent indicated between 30 to 60 minutes, 6 percent said 1 to 3 hours, and 58 percent spend between 0 and 30 minutes.