C.Would office emails go the same way as the fax machine and rolodex? They’re yet to join those dinosaurs in the workplace, but there were signs of evolutionary change at the annual meeting of business leaders in Davos this week, where tech chiefs said email was becoming obsolete.
The chief executive of IT firm Wipro, which employs 260,000 people globally, said about 10% of his staff “don’t even check an email a month” and used Instagram and LinkedIn to talk to staff. .
“They are 25 years old, they don’t care. They don’t go to their emails, they go to Snapchat, they go to all these things,” Thierry Delaporte said. Anjali Sud, chief executive of video platform Vimeo, told the summit that the emails were “outdated.”
Delaporte’s comments, reported by the Daily Telegraphhe referred to Gen Z professionals, usually people born after 1997, but according to a UK business owner, it affects all generations.
“If I want something done quickly, I rarely rely on email,” says Farhad Divecha, owner and CEO of London-based digital marketing agency Accuracast. I tend to send a [Microsoft] Teams message, or even WhatsApp if it’s really urgent. I could email the details, but in the last three to five years I’ve learned that email isn’t good enough if you want to get something done fast.”
He adds that some customers with Gen Z employees preferred to skip email and used alternatives like the Slack messaging service. “It’s not uncommon for customers with more Gen Z employees to say to us, ‘Let’s take the discussion over to Slack because we don’t tend to use email much,'” she says.
Email has many rivals offering messaging services. Instagram is used by more than 2 billion people a month, LinkedIn has 875 million members, Snapchat has more than 360 million daily users, and 2 billion people use WhatsApp. Microsoft’s Teams platform is also popular, with more than 270 million users.
But email isn’t going away, and its use continues to grow. The total number of business and consumer emails sent and received each day will exceed 333 billion by 2022, says technology research firm Radicati, representing a 4% increase from the previous year, and growing to more than 390 billion by 2026. More than half the world’s population, 4.2 billion, uses email, according to Radicati.
“We don’t feel like email is dying,” says the research firm’s CEO, Sara Radicati. A major source of growth in email usage is coming from the consumer sphere, such as emails related to online purchases. Also, an email account is needed for all kinds of online activity, such as setting up social media accounts and purchasing products.
Radicati recognizes, however, that in the world of work, social networks and instant messaging play a role alongside email. “Email tends to be used for official communications, while more interpersonal and informal communication is making its way through social media and instant messaging,” he says.
Professionals who spoke to The Guardian described a mixed approach to email use. Jordan, 28, a project manager in the Bristol construction industry, says there was a divide between formal and informal communications at work: “I only use emails to talk about formal things that need to be written. That’s in terms of deals or something. But for anything remotely casual, I go straight to Teams.”
Tracy, 29, a scientific researcher from London, says she often checks her personal email “to keep track of things like theater tickets or other purchases.” At her job, she has a separate email address “which she made and uses very formally,” but also uses instant messaging in Teams for quick check-ins with colleagues. She adds that she “never” uses text messages or social media to contact her colleagues in the workplace.
Generation Z workers who contacted The Guardian also said they regularly used work emails. “I usually check personal emails once a day and work emails regularly between 9 and 6,” says Matthew, 23, a London-based human rights paralegal. Meanwhile, Owen, 25, a programmer from Aberdeen, says: “Like any professional environment, my workplace uses email. If I was asked to check something like Instagram at work, I would expect some kind of wrongdoing to be taking place.”
To an expert, Davos’ comments reflect a constant of professional life: relentless technological and cultural change. Emails were frowned upon by the “phone and letter” generation, says Thomas Robinson, a senior lecturer at Bayes Business School in London. But a change happened anyway.
“We can partner with the younger generation and add our experience to that, partner with that community, or we can make enemies in the future. But to think that you can slow down technocultural change is a bird thing,” she says.
