U.S. Cellular公司的首席运营长杰•艾里森(Jay Ellison)在公司推行一个“周五无电邮日”的规定，本以为这可以减轻员工的工作负担。
但事与愿违，这个规定遭到员工反对，愤怒的回应比比皆是，市场营销经理凯西•沃尔皮(Kathy Volpi)直言不讳地对艾里森的决定表示不满。
沃尔皮说，这种规定不仅无用，而且让工作更难办。“我认为，艾里森根本不知道我们要做多少事情，而用电子邮件可以省去多少麻烦。”
越来越多的企业──包括U.S. Cellular、德勤会计师事务所(Deloitte & Touche)和英特尔公司(Intel)等──正在实行或尝试“无电邮”的周五或周末。一般来说，给客户发电子邮件或用其处理紧急事务还是允许的，但公司内部的常规电邮暂时停止。违反规定的员工要被处以象征性的罚款，或被CEO叫进办公室谈话。
这种限制的目的是鼓励员工多跟客户和同事做面对面的沟通或电话交谈，以提高工作效率，或让员工暂时远离越来越多的电子邮件，喘上一口气。美国加州帕落阿托市研究咨询公司Radicati Group表示，预计2007年美国企业员工发出的电邮数量比去年增加27%，平均每人每天47封。根据2007年英国格拉斯哥大学 (University of Glasgow)和佩斯里大学(Paisley University)对177人的调查报告，约有三分之一的用户觉得电邮数量太多，带来的压力很大，许多人在一个小时内经常要查30到40次邮件。
公司经理们抱怨说，员工利用电子邮件逃避问题而非解决问题，把事情像烫手的山芋一样推来推去。电子邮件减少了员工与同事和客户之间面对面的接触，而且措辞不好的邮件会进一步损害这种关系。此外，电子邮件还占用员工的周末时间，把他们拴在电脑旁，不得休息。
然而，一旦要暂停电邮，有些员工坚决表示反对，就像戒烟者一天都离不开尼古丁贴片一样。2004年，杰里米•伯顿(Jeremy Burton)在其加州的软件公司推行“禁邮令”，但不到15分钟就有人犯规。自称收发电邮成瘾的迈克尔•派克(Michael Parker)迫不及待地按下发送键，干下第一票电子邮件“偷渡”案。派克每天要发送300封邮件，他说自己实在是忍不住。
“这种感觉就像超速一样，”派克说，“明明知道是法律禁止的，但你就是控制不住；就像上了战场，忍不住就想开枪射击。
伯顿很兴奋地予以反击，罚派克1美元，在办公室里到处张贴他的大头像，作为“通缉犯”，在他衣服的胸口处贴上大大的紫色字母“E”（代表罪恶的电邮 “Email”）。派克仍在为伯顿工作，伯顿现在是加州圣马蒂奥Serena软件公司的总裁兼首席执行官。派克说，尽管花了整整三年，但在CEO强调面对面沟通的理念熏陶下，他已经减少了约20%的电邮使用量。对于电邮中毒者而言，只有CEO干预才是唯一的治疗药方。“必须有人站出来说：‘不行，我们得停掉电邮。’这让人有点难以习惯，但没有别的办法。”
心理学家肯•西格尔(Siegel)将电子邮件上瘾归类于“依赖症”。如果有人想改变这种习惯，员工起初会变得具有攻击性，大肆批评，身为洛杉矶管理咨询公司Impact Group总裁的西格尔说。尝试推行其它的沟通方式可能举步维艰，“人们会前进一两步，然后倒退三四步。”
美国俄亥俄州哥伦布市培训咨询公司ePolicy Institute执行董事南希•弗莱恩(Nancy Flynn)建议雇主们实行“禁邮日”，但她也警告说：“对有些人来说，如果不让他们用电子邮件，他们会惊慌失措。”
2006 年，美国乔治亚州阿尔法立塔市的PBD Worldwide Fulfillment Services公司要求其300名员工在周五停止发送不必要的电子邮件。问题很明显，市场销售及营销部资深副总裁格莱格•多克特(Greg Dockter)说：“有的邮件来来回回反复了十几二十次，有六、七个人参与其中，简直太荒谬了。”
但一些员工立即提出反对意见。“电子邮件已经成为我们的左膀右臂，而你现在却要把它砍断，”PBD公司薪酬福利协调员斯特西•维拉鲁比亚(Stacey Villarrubia)回忆起当时的情景说。她虽然遵守规定，但对其并不认可。她在周五还照常写邮件，只是把它们存起来，在下周一自动发送出去。她和其他员工的这种做法导致周一的邮件发送出现拥堵。为防止员工违规，多克特说，“我在大厅来回走动，盯着那些想写邮件的人。”
许多公司的管理者表示，“禁邮令”很有效。不久后，我谈过的那些抵触者回过头来支持“禁邮令”。PBD的维拉鲁比亚说，她不再让仓库经理转发邮件给其手下，而是开始走去仓库，面对面地跟员工交谈。现在，越来越多的人在她办公室旁停下，“向我打招呼，跟我聊他们的家庭生活。”
德勤会计师事务所有700名员工从事财务监管及资本市场咨询服务。公司在休斯顿的人力资源部负责人莱斯利•诺尔顿(Leslie Knowlton)说，自2006年1月宣布“禁邮令”以来，经理们一直推行该政策，禁止员工在周末时间发送非必要的电子邮件。管理者杰夫•克拉福特 (Jeff Craft)等员工逐渐接受了这一规定。克拉福特说，虽然他在周末的工作量几乎没有减少，但他选择某段时间集中工作，这样，不用受随时发来的电子邮件的左右。
甚至连U.S. Cellular产品管理及营销部负责人沃尔皮也转而支持公司的“禁邮令”。她逐渐认识到，阅读和回复所有邮件也许会给同事带来负担。现在，她经常在周五与同事面对面交谈。工作并不只是发送“冷冰冰的报告”和保持高效，“与人交流沟通同样重要。”沃尔皮说道。
PBD客户关系部资深副总裁布莱恩•查伊(Brion Zaeh)说，“禁邮令”也让客户受益非浅。通过周五的“禁邮令”，他的团队与全公司的同事更熟悉了。最近一位客户有一大笔订单急需收货，他的团队与40 多位同事一起每周工作七天，直到发出货物。“如果还按原来的工作方式”，依赖电子邮件，“我们根本不可能那么迅速地完成订单。”
A Day Without Email Is Like…
When U.S. Cellular’s chief operating officer, Jay Ellison, imposed a ’no email Friday’ rule at his company, he thought it would ease workers’ overload.
Instead, he got a rebellion. Among many irate responses, Kathy Volpi, a marketing director, confronted Mr. Ellison and ’just ripped me,’ he says. ’She really gave me a piece of her mind.’
Ms. Volpi says that at the time the ban seemed like a needless obstacle. ’I thought, ’He just doesn’t understand how much work we have to get done, and how much easier’’ it is when using email.
A growing number of employers, including U.S. Cellular, Deloitte & Touche and Intel, are imposing or trying out ’no email’ Fridays or weekends. While the bans typically allow emailing clients and customers or responding to urgent matters, the normal flow of routine internal email is halted. Violators are hit with token fines, or just called out by the boss.
The limits aim to encourage more face-to-face and phone contact with customers and co-workers, raise productivity or just give employees a reprieve from the ever-rising email tide. Emails sent by individual corporate users are projected to increase 27% this year, to an average of 47 a day, up from 37 in 2006, says Radicati Group, a Palo Alto, Calif., research and consulting firm. And one-third of users feel stressed by heavy email volume, according to a 2007 study of 177 people by the University of Glasgow and Paisley University in Scotland. Many check email as often as 30 to 40 times an hour, the study showed.
Managers complain that rather than confronting problems, employees use email to avoid them by passing issues back and forth in long message strings, like a hot potato. Email reduces face-to-face contact among co-workers and clients; terse, poorly phrased messages further strain those relationships. And it is spilling into weekends, chaining employees to computers when they should be relaxing.
But withdraw it even for a day, and some employees fight back like recovering smokers in a nicotine fit. Jeremy Burton’s 2004 email ban at a California software firm wasn’t 15 minutes old before self-described email addict Michael Parker hit the ’send’ button on the first digital contraband. Accustomed to sending up to 300 messages a day, Mr. Parker says he couldn’t help himself.
’It’s kind of like speeding,’ he says. ’You know there’s a law that says you’re not supposed to do it, but when you’re in the heat of combat, you aim and fire.’
In a mirthful counterattack, Mr. Burton fined Mr. Parker $1, had ’Wanted’ posters with his mug shot tacked up around the office, and made him wear a scarlet ’E’ on his chest. Mr. Parker still works for Mr. Burton, who is now president and CEO of Serena Software, San Mateo, Calif. Although it has taken three years, Mr. Parker says his boss’s insistence on face-to-face communication has helped him curb his email usage, he guesses by roughly 20%. For heavy users, he says, an executive intervention is the only cure. ’Somebody has to say, ’No, we’re going to turn this off.’ It’s a bit of a shock, but that’s what it takes.’
Psychologist Ken Siegel classifies the email habit as ’a dependency.’ Cut off from their habit, employees at first may become hostile and critical, says Dr. Siegel, president of Impact Group, Los Angeles management consultants. Initial efforts to communicate in other ways may be halting at best; ’people will take one or two steps forward and three or four steps back.’
Although Nancy Flynn, executive director of the ePolicy Institute, a Columbus, Ohio, training and consulting firm, recommends employers impose ’no email’ days, she attaches a warning: ’When you try to take email away from some users, they’re going to panic.’
PBD Worldwide Fulfillment Services, Alpharetta, Ga., ordered its 300 employees to halt nonessential Friday emails last year. The problems were obvious, says Greg Dockter, senior vice president, sales and marketing: ’We’d have email chains with 10 or 20 subject lines back and forth, with six or seven people involved, and it just became ridiculous.’
But some employees immediately tried to circumvent the ban. ’Email has become our right arm, and now you’ve cut it off,’ Stacey Villarrubia, PBD’s payroll and benefits coordinator, recalls thinking at the time. She abided by the letter of the rule, but not the spirit. She continued drafting emails on Friday, but stockpiled them in her box for automatic release on Monday. The resulting backlog from her and other employees led to a logjam of messages in everyone’s in-boxes on Monday. To curb offenders, Mr. Dockter says, ’I’d run down the hall and call them out on it.’
The e-mail edicts are working well, executives say. And in time, all the resisters I interviewed came around to support their employers’ email bans. PBD’s Ms. Villarrubia says that instead of emailing the bosses of warehouse employees and asking them to relay messages, she started walking to the warehouse to see the employees face-to-face. More people stop by her office now ’to say hi, pass on family plans,’ she says.
At Deloitte & Touche’s 700-employee regulatory and capital-markets consulting practice, managers have been promoting a ban on nonessential weekend email since it was announced last January, says Leslie Knowlton, Houston, human-resources leader for the practice. Gradually, employees like Jeff Craft, a manager in the group, have caught on. Although he still works almost as much on weekends, he picks the hours he works, rather than feeling chained to incoming email on his computer, he says.
Even Ms. Volpi, now U.S. Cellular’s director of product management and marketing, has become a fan of her boss’s ban. Gradually, she realized that reading and responding to all the email she was sending was probably a burden to co-workers. Now, she makes a point of visiting co-workers on Fridays. Business, she says, isn’t only about emailing ’cold reports’ and being efficient, she says. ’It’s about human beings and interaction.’
Clients have benefited too, says Brion Zaeh, PBD’s senior vice president, client relations. His team has gotten better acquainted with co-workers throughout the company. And when a client recently needed a big order sent quickly, his group teamed up with 40 co-workers to work seven days a week until the shipments were out. ’If we had just done it the same old way,’ with heavy reliance on email relationships, he says, ’there’s no way it would have been successful.’