This piece is by Jonathan Roe and Ray Khan, members of Thrive’s Development Team. This is the seventh blog piece in a series that shines a light on the Thrive Teacher Workload Charter. Along with our headteacher team, we have devised 11 statements that will help manage workload so that great teachers still have the energy be great family members and great friends.
How many emails did you get today? Too many? Were there some you didn’t need to be included in? Did they come in the middle of the night? Could some of them have been shorter?
These are the sort of questions that we all struggle with as the answers to them directly impact on our workload.
Here are some thoughts on how we can reduce the amount of email traffic across Thrive.
How often do you check email, and when do you check out?
We encourage all colleagues to see email as we might have seen letters in a bygone age. Put simply it’s not just chat - there are other routes for chat like text and WhatsApp. It follows that we don’t expect colleagues to be constantly checking their email fo the latest update. Most staff will check email before morning lessons begin and at the end of the day - and possibly at lunchtime. The rest of the day the focus is lessons and learning.
We also encourage schools to have an email check out time, something like 5pm, so staff can spend their evening knowing that their inbox isn’t filling up. We also discourage the sending of email over weekends or holidays, and we discourage having email notifications on phones.
Some staff may have good reason to work out of hours, and this will include writing emails. We encourage colleagues to use the schedule send option and time email to arrive at a reasonable hour.
Tips for meaningful use of email that has the lowest impact on workload
Clarity - Keep to the point, be factual and snappy. Bullet points are encouraged. This can result in a more formal tone - but that’s a small price to pay.
Summarise - Make time to write a summary email - it could be that a single email will work as opposed to a lengthy ping-pong exchange with a colleague. It may be that you need to keep your team up to date with developments, so open a notepad (Google Tasks are great and integrate with your calendar) and keep a list of things you need to say in a weekly round up. If a lengthy exchange of ideas is required, arrange to meet. Talking face to face allows for more of a ‘flow’ and each party can read the other’s expression, tone and body language - talk and meet face to face wherever possible.
Audience - Think carefully about who needs to be on the receiving end and who does not. Agree a list of distribution groups in such ool and use these. Only use all staff email with permission and as a last resort. Think carefully about who to cc or bcc into emails - is it necessary (they may not think so)?
Content and tone - Keep it professional at all times - the subject (a parent or an agency) can request everything you write, so be factual, leave out opinion and avoid emotive language (this also applies to WhatsApp etc. all comms can be requested as part of a subject access request). Being too informal or opinionated can come back to haunt and generate a great deal of extra work.
Gratitude - Some staff prefer not to give one word replies to email like thanks because it generates yet another email - but there again an acknowledgement can be important. It’s a difficult one.
Review - Read your email back to yourself before sending. Checking for clarity can avoid lengthy email chains requesting clarity and apology!
In summary:
Treat email like correspondence, not chat;
Be considerate and agree a cut off time for emails for work days and weekends and holidays;
Send pithy, summary, factual email.
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