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According to a recent ABC news article, the international tech company, Alto, has begun to implement a “zero-email policy,” devised to dismantle the company’s use of traditional email. This fact may seem more significant when you hear how large and international their company is- with 42 offices worldwide, 74,000 employees and revenue of $11.5 billion last year, they are no small fry.
The switch came as a result of excessive spam to and from the company’s accounts. And believing their most valuable communications to be internal, they have chosen to engage a Facebook-like platform, as well as Wiki’s, which allow users to contribute various types of content as well as live-edit each other’s work.
Thus far the technique has been popular with employees who have taken up the newly offered alternatives. The company’s new policy means employees will be banned from such normative practices; an action that is only to their benefit, Alto has said. According to CEO Thierry Breton of the French information technology company, “only 10 percent of the 200 messages employees receive per day are useful and 18 percent is spam.” So cutting out this system will lead to not only greater productivity but less waste. In the past, “middle managers spend more than 25 percent of their time searching for information,” a redundancy that will now be corrected.
Alto’s actions certainly raise the question: Do they have the secret to better productivity? And, if a company their size can successfully pull-off such a measure, shouldn’t the rest of us be thinking about which standard tech practices we can innovate for better business practices? Whatever the end result may be, Alto’s fearless endeavor is proving that it’s never too late, or early to re-evaluate “what works,” no matter your company’s size or reach.
CLICK HERE to read more about Alto and their provocative tech decision to go email-less.
