One of the biggest challenges facing employees when they first start their careers is how to communicate on the job effectively. Business communication skills are often treated as a “nice to have” rather than being an essential part of the job. It’s often expected that new hires will have been exposed to proper business communication either through previous jobs or the education system. University courses on effective business communication exist but they’re often considered boring and insignificant so in most curricula, they’re optional. Poor communication on the job is often the core reason for projects falling behind schedule and clients becoming unhappy with delivered results.

Throughout my career, it’s always baffled me when failures are brushed off with comments like “It was just a miscommunication”. Proper communication doesn’t require a degree in the language you’re communicating in, you just need to follow a few simple rules. Organizations of all types can save money and clients by simply guiding employees on how to effectively communicate.

Communication Methods

The most common methods of communication in an organization are:

• Email
• Chat
• Telephone calls
• Video Calls
• In-person meetings

Each of these communication methods is critical in the development of a successful career. As such, each one needs to have the proper time and space dedicated to it. Over the next 5 or 6 weeks, I’ll attempt to address each of them. This week, let’s focus on email.

Structure of an Email

Sender

This is you (the “from” in an email), if you’re the one sending the email you need to professionally identify yourself. Within your email application, you need to properly setup the following:

Sender name – This is your name as it will be displayed to recipients. Use your full name, no nicknames, no abbreviations.

Organization – Add the organization information if it has not already been set up by the IT department. This includes the organization’s name, address, website, and phone number.

Title – This is your job title.

Contact information – This includes a reply email address, phone number, and if you’ve used a video communication application like Magnifi Virtual Office that allows you to include a video address; include that.

Addressee

The addressee section of an email consists of three items.

To: This is the main person you are addressing in the email. Only include people whom you are directly informing, expecting to take action, or expecting a response from. Do not include people who just need to be kept informed on this line.

CC: Carbon Copy (or Courtesy Copy). This is where you include the people who need to be kept informed but are not expected to take direct action or reply to the email.

BCC: Blind Carbon Copy: (or Blind Courtesy Copy). This is where you include the people who need to be kept informed but are not directly involved in the conversation. In the past, quite often a member of a sales team would include me on BCC email to a client when discussing new product features. This would keep the conversation on a more personal level with clients but allow me, as the technical lead, to see any upcoming projects as well as identify any potential issues with delivery and budget without alarming the clients.

Subject

The subject line in an email is very important but this is where a lot of people start to struggle. Rather than look at what can go wrong, let’s just look at how to create a subject line. A good subject line should be:

• Less than 50 words. A lot of email clients don’t place any restrictions on subject length and in some cases, it can be beneficial to see a long subject line but email clients will often abbreviate the subject line. Make your subject line brief and direct but not at the risk of making the subject too vague.
• Identify the content. A good subject line will tell the recipient exactly what they can will find when they open the email. Unlike a marketing email that is intended to entice the recipient to open the email at all costs and immediately, a business email needs to be informative. A good subject line allows the recipient to immediately prioritize reading the email with what they are currently working on.
• Provide context if necessary. While I’ve said above that a subject line should identify the content, it should also provide context if there is a possibility of similar emails being sent. A good example of this would be meeting minutes being sent out for weekly project meetings. “Minutes and action items from weekly company website project meeting – Sep 1, 2023”. This subject identifies the content “Minutes and Action Items”, the meeting being referenced “weekly company website project meeting”, and the date of that meeting, indicating which of the weekly meetings it references. “Sep 1, 2023”.

Body

The body of an email is the core details that you are communicating. This is where most of the miscommunication happens. Many times what is communicated can often be interpreted in different ways or is unclear as to what the expectation is. When this happens, you risk the possibility that recipients will just guess rather than ask for clarification. This can create more confusion and lead to loss of time, money and clients. A good email body should:

Be Clear and Concise. All business communication should be easy to understand. Emails especially though need to focus on the topic at hand and only that. Don’t use any vague wording and don’t leave anything up to interpretation. I often tell people when writing an email, to consider it as if they were travelling from one place to another. First, you would decide on your method of transportation (email in this case), second, choose your destination (in this case, what you want to have happen when that email is read. The call to action or expected response), third, map out the most direct and clear path to reach your destination.

Be Polite. Good manners make a difference in any communication whether verbal or written, Email is no exception. Please and thank you can go a long way in determining how an email is perceived and will help to communicate the tone.

Be Well organized. Provide any and all information that is needed for the recipient to understand the email. This information should be communicated in an orderly manner that is easy to understand

Use proper grammar, spelling, punctuation and formatting. I can’t emphasize this enough! If you don’t check your content for these four items and you don’t communicate in a professional manner, you cannot expect a professional response. That means, no uncommon abbreviations, no slang terms, no text speak, use full sentences, use paragraphs, use punctuation to avoid misinterpretation. Poor punctuation can change the meaning completely. Consider this common example: “Let’s eat, Grandma.” vs. “Let’s eat Grandma.”. The latter could have disastrous results whether from a business perspective or not. I’ve said this before and will continue to say it over and over again but if you have not done it yet, download Grammarly and use it! It is free and it works!

Include an easily identifiable call to action or response expectation

If you have any expectation that something will be done, you need to express it. Tell the recipient directly what you expect from them and let them know when it’s expected. It’s not always easy to tell someone directly what they need to do and when they need to have it completed. We’d all love to have colleagues read our minds and respond when they need to but that doesn’t happen. You need to be direct when outlining your expectations.

Attachments

When you attach a file or multiple files to an email, you need to:

Tell the recipient what you’ve attached. If you’ve attached five files, tell them you’ve attached five files then tell them what those files are. This helps ensure that no information has been accidentally lost in the email. If you intended to send five files but the recipient only gets four, if you don’t tell them you sent 5, neither of you would know something is missing from the email and you may not get the results you’re hoping for in the response from the recipient. Additionally, name your files appropriately. If you send multiple files that can’t be identified by the name, the recipient will have to download all of them and then look through them to find the file they are looking for. Sending files with cryptic names is unprofessional and just wastes time.

Who should respond to an email with multiple recipients?

If your email address is in the “to” field, then you need to respond. This email is directed at you and if it requires a response then it’s up to you to provide it. If you were CC’d on this email and you have information that needs to be included in the response then contact the main recipient and provide that information to them or if the group needs to be informed, it’s okay to respond to the email, adding the main recipient (“To” field) of the original email, to the main recipient list (“To” field) of yours. Provide them with the information that you have and how they can reach you should they need to follow up or get more details. Or, you can also pick up the phone or send a message in chat. The important part is to deliver the information, you don’t have to use email to do that if you were copied, especially if there is any urgency in the delivery of it.

Important and urgent emails

Use Important and Urgent flags cautiously. Sending an email with an “Important!” flag should be accompanied by, or follow a phone call. If an issue is urgent and needs to be addressed immediately, either pick up the phone and discuss it or walk over to their desk. When I’m copied on an important or urgent email and don’t see the words “As discussed” in that email, I become concerned about the communication within the team.

Final thoughts

Communicating over email is not instinctive and is not always intuitive, especially for those who are new to an organization. Without proper guidance, junior employees will most likely follow the lead of senior employees. That will eventually work if the senior employees themselves have the proper training on how to communicate but if they don’t then the same bad habits will be passed along. The result is more lost opportunities, more delayed projects, and more dissatisfied clients. “It was just a miscommunication” has an impact that can be avoided. A simple 30-minute training session followed up with written guidelines could save time, deadlines and money.

If you would like to know how to effectively train your employees to communicate more professionally and clearly or would just like some individual training, feel free to contact me to arrange a session.