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Do CEOs read their own emails? In India, they don’t. Most CEOs of larger companies are relics from dinosaur land. They know more about g-strings than gmail. This is not to question their competence. It’s simply that technology has passed them by.
The wiser CEOs have executive assistants and even secretaries to scan their mail and print out the necessary ones. Others just ignore the whole thing; if somebody is interested in communicating with them, they can come through the traditional routes. So why do they have an email ID at all? Well, it’s the fashionable thing to do. It also gives an image of being technology-savvy.
Publicising an email ID for the world to message you has its dangers. At discount warehouse chain Costco, the CEO started getting 12,000 emails a day after a campaign by an environmental group about its seafood policies. How do you identify the relevant messages from this barrage? In effect, the mailbox is frozen.
Sony, having problems with the freeware brigade over its PS3 console, froze its CEO’s mailbox. The resulting debate on the Net didn’t do the company much good. AT&T is reported to have warned a customer that emailing the CEO again would result in a cease-and-desist letter. The user in question had sent two mails complaining about service.
There is a bigger danger in email when you throw open the medium inside your organisation. There is, of course, the time issue. Your own staff can be expected to be more reasonable and you are unlikely to encounter any spammers. But each email will take much more time to resolve.
There are some CEOs who feel that encouraging emails from staff is an extension of an open-door policy. But when you had an open door physically, there was probably a secretary sitting in front of it. You may well have a secretary to filter emails. But the sender thinks he has reached you directly. If you don’t respond — or if your secretary does — there could be a sense of being ignored, very bad for morale in the long run. It is better not to take the route in the first place.
Stephen D. Bruce, editor of the HR Daily Advisor, warns in an article that unless the HR department is very alert about the consequences (see box), complicated situations could develop. His data show that 89 per cent of the CEOs in the US answer their own employee emails. Outsiders — principally customers — matter. But antagonising insiders could be much more perilous.
Do the potential gains outweigh the dangers? An email-friendly CEO is closer to his staff. Complaining emails also serve as early warning systems. It is often possible to tackle a problem before it reaches critical mass. And a two-way flow of email is often a virtuous cycle.
The trouble is that the advantages are a bit nebulous, while some of the disadvantages can be quantified. You, know, for instance, how much time you are spending responding to employee email. Is it worth it, given the so many other things you could have done? On the other hand, was the problem you got notified about (and which you thought the email alerted you to) really not on anybody’s radar screen? It is the job of executives in the company to keep track of such things.
The real danger, however, is if CEO employee mail is taken to its logical conclusion. When the CEO is seen to support this process, others will be quick to adopt it. So you will have the shopfloor trainee emailing the foreman and the salesman his supervisor. With lack of human contact, the organisation is bound to become dysfunctional. You will realise that when you find you haven’t spoken to your colleague in the next cubicle for a month, though you have been in contact with him several times a day.
WRONG MESSAGES
“Mommy may I” syndrome: Kids ask one parent, and if they don’t like the answer, they ask the other parent. When employees do the same thing with the CEO’s mailbox, it puts the HR manager in an awkward position of defending the company’s policies to the CEO. This can even occur when the HR department has already extensively dealt with a situation.
Unique relationship: Other problems may develop in which certain employees feel uniquely empowered through their “special relationship” with the CEO. That can make it difficult to manage these employees, and co-workers may feel the employee is getting special benefits.
Allegations of misconduct: If the CEO is made aware of certain prohibited conduct (i.e. sexual harassment allegations), he or she may not know the appropriate response. (Probably you want to train him or her to contact HR immediately, and not promise confidentiality.)
Snap responses: The CEO may want to deal with problems “decisively” which may result in a quick response that doesn’t take into account the history and context of the situation or doesn’t correspond with regulatory or policy requirements.
