Last week hundreds of people were laid off at a local company. All the people received emails and were told they were unemployed as of a specific date. Some had been there for years. Some had humongous family responsibilities. Some had health issues. It didn’t matter; they were history.
Email, while it is one of the most convenient tools in our everyday lives, can and has become one of the worst. Frankly, it enables those who don’t have the guts to look someone in the eye and tell them bad news to get away with it! It’s the easy way out.
What happened to the good, old belly button to belly button method? Well, you may say, how can any company take time to communicate face-to-face with everyone? The alternative perhaps is a letter thanking Joe Blow for his 23 years with the company. What’s wrong with a large meeting? It’s the difference between signing a letter with a real as opposed to a stamped one.
Did you know that emotion and tone in an email are more likely to be misinterpreted than in traditional communication? Email lacks body language, expression and vocal inflections. Email can create more rage and anger, making the clean up time last for hours, days and even months. So why muddy the waters in a highly emotional situation that’s already emotion on steroids?
Have we become so settled and staid with our computers and entrenched in this economy that we forget there is a real human being on the other side of that email? What would this company have done if email didn’t exist? Are we allowing killer emails to replace the warm handshake and the soft tone of someone telling them their services are no loner needed? If the people who are sending these emails were the recipient of a killer email, how would they feel? Even in good times, a killer email is tough to receive. But during an economic downturn, it’s doubly worse.
We’ve all seen people who work next to each other in the same office – we’re talking five or six feet apart – exchange emails. Try this one in your office and see how your internal communications skyrocket: no in-house emails allowed for one week, except approved documents.
What happened to “be kind to each other?” What happened to the “golden rule,” honor, and integrity? To those of you who believe business is business, perhaps you may be in line for the next killer email.
