Decreasing Employee Productivity with Email Free Fridays

Charles Bermant - E-mail-free Fridays a pilot program within Intel has worked to encourage the members of an organic group to focus each Friday on direct conversation, walking across the aisle or picking up the phone to deliver a short message. Other companies have also tried the idea, which gets some initial resistance but is eventually accepted when employees see the benefit of increased “face time.”

So here’s what will happen: Companies will encourage e-mail-free periods for employees to converse. They will walk over to a neighboring cubicle to ask “when will the presentation be ready?” and the conversation will evolve into “how about those Seahawks?” Pretty soon productivity will decrease, and a year later the policy gets revised — again. Link.

Amit Agarwal

Amit Agarwal

Google Developer Expert, Google Cloud Champion

Amit Agarwal is a Google Developer Expert in Google Workspace and Google Apps Script. He holds an engineering degree in Computer Science (I.I.T.) and is the first professional blogger in India.

Amit has developed several popular Google add-ons including Mail Merge for Gmail and Document Studio. Read more on Lifehacker and YourStory

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Awards & Titles

Digital Inspiration has won several awards since it's launch in 2004.

Google Developer Expert

Google Developer Expert

Google awarded us the Google Developer Expert award recogizing our work in Google Workspace.

ProductHunt Golden Kitty

ProductHunt Golden Kitty

Our Gmail tool won the Lifehack of the Year award at ProductHunt Golden Kitty Awards in 2017.

Microsoft MVP Alumni

Microsoft MVP Alumni

Microsoft awarded us the Most Valuable Professional (MVP) title for 5 years in a row.

Google Cloud Champion

Google Cloud Champion

Google awarded us the Champion Innovator title recognizing our technical skill and expertise.

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