Has email run its course?  For some time a chorus of voices has made this case when it comes to engaging customers.  More recently, though, this case has been made for when business leaders engage employees.

Sue Shellenbarger, a one-time speaker at our annual conference, writes on this topic today in her Wall Street Journal blog The Juggle.  She says drawbacks to communications team building via email include the time needed to review and act on " one-on-one email strings."  She also cites employee engagement research from the Journal of Applied Psychology which suggests that email "may also make users feel less responsible for telling the truth."

A few small businesses in our network have taken the impactful step of barring email communications, whether just on Fridays as Shellenbarger notes she addressed in a past blog post, or always among employees as our Best Boss and Board member Michael Mulqueen did shortly before he exited his leadership role at the Greater Chicago Food Depository.

I think the impact of leaders and managers communicating with employees via means other than email would have a palpable effect on their workplace culture and productivity levels.  The three that I'd most like to see include, in decreasing order of adoption:

1. In person.  Obviously even with great strides in communications technology this still happens – I'd just like to see more of it.  Leaders can accomplish this by continuing to practice MBWA.
2. Phone – specifically CEOs taking a cue from Diane Hessan at Communispace and leaving regular voicemails with relevant and timely information for all employees.
3. As part of a robust company intranet.  Why not tack on messaging to this technology that has proven to greatly improve employees' knowledge and customer response times, particularly for companies concerned with maintaining virtual team building like our honoree Point B?

What's your top three list of alternatives to email?  Or do you think email ain't broke for your business, so there's no need to fix it?

Image credit: Basex Blog