The technology explosion has given a new dimension to office warfare, writes Chris Ball
Imagine opening your office post and finding a memo from the boss attacking you in highly abusive terms.
But we live in the age of the electronic office, and memos are now often e-mails. Click on “address” after receiving a particularly nasty e-mail message, and you find it has been copied to 15 colleagues.
As the pen is to the sword, so the e-mail is to the blunderbuss. “Flames”, as such electronic insults are called, are an increasingly common feature of life in the computerised office.
As e-mail increasingly displaces other means of communication, we are discovering its drawbacks as well as its simplicity.
Not surprisingly, the darker side of human nature sometimes surfaces in e-mails, and evidence is accumulating that harassment by e-mail is an increasing problem.
Peter Skyte, of the Information Technology Professionals Association, has seen it all.
“Top management puts pressure on a line manager to resolve a problem, and the manager, rather than arranging face-to-face meetings with his subordinates, bombards them with e-mails copied to all and sundry,” he says.
A study last year by the computer software company Novell (designers of software in company e-mail systems) surveyed more than 1 000 e-mail users.
It found that more than half had often received abusive messages, while a further quarter said that they knew of colleagues who regularly received such messages.
Novell managing director Andrew Sadler-Smith says he wants to help companies reel in those misusing the e-mail system.
He estimates that only one in 70 of those who have been “flamed” end up leaving their jobs as a result, but reckons the losses in productivity are greater, as recipients spend some time in composing fitting ripostes.
“Managers can hide behind e-mail and avoid face-to-face meetings,” says Sadler-Smith, “but that won’t do.”
He is against the “back-covering” business of copying messages, and Novell is issuing guidance on how to get the best out of e- mail while avoiding commonplace abuses.
For some workers, however, e-mail harassment is simply part of a wider phenomenon of bullying at work, increasingly recognised by personnel professionals.
Lynne Witheridge, director of the Andrea Adams Trust, which is concerned with bullying, confirms that it is not uncommon for people to leave their jobs after being “flamed”.
She says: “Often these e-mail messages are only part of a bad experience. But they may be the final straw which brings about a collapse of confidence, and descent into depression and ill health.”
Psychologist Neal Crawford sees the problem as one of distance in communication which the technology makes possible.
“People sometimes feel they can communicate by e-mail and that they don’t have to meet people face to face. They send and receive the same messages to dozens of people, and eventually someone takes umbrage and responds sharply with an offensive message because they can never get hold of the real person generating all this stuff. Hence, the e-mail war starts.”
War is an apt metaphor in some cases. “Flame” mails often beget more flame mails. In some cases offensive messages circulated to a number of people prompt some of those receiving copies to chip in. Feuds and communications breakdowns are all too possible.
There are many different ways of giving offence, and “flames” take different forms.
Last year, London broker NatWest Markets fired three employees and disciplined 12 others for distributing pornographic material over the internal e-mail system.
In the United States, two employees of Morgan Stanley have complained of emotional and physical distress as a result of an e- mail containing racist remarks circulated to other employees.
And an increasingly common practical joke for the technologically inclined is to leave an abusive message on a colleague’s screen with no sign of the originator’s identity.
So what began as a magical communications tool has, in some cases, become a source of bad dreams.
Protocols and codes for the use of e-mail are one way of dealing with the problem, but for Peter Skyte they are only a partial solution. “The e-mail bully is no different from any other. You have to stand up to him,” he says.
He offers a checklist including keeping copies of offending e-mails on a personal floppy disk, not dashing off instant replies, and keeping a diary of events.
“In an era when more and more employees are dispersed or working independently through electronic means, they need to be empowered and organised to take the initiative,” he says.
Abusive e-mails don’t just begin and end in the office. Mobile workers, collecting messages on their modem-equipped laptops, may wonder whether there is really anywhere to hide.
Tackling and eradicating “flaming” may assume added urgency as we increasingly turn away from the traditional office – though given that even yobs can sometimes be ingenious, the task may prove beyond us.