"Employees are e-mailing their co-workers in higher frequencies in an effort to be helpful and more communicative," said Maurene Caplan Grey of Gartner. "In reality, they are cluttering e-mail in-boxes, filling up servers and sapping productivity with the volume of these messages. In a slowing economy, where businesses are looking for ways to cut costs and increase productivity, simply cutting out unnecessary e-mail will have an immediate impact."
The Gartner survey, which posed a range of questions to workers on their use of e-mail and instant messaging, also found that employees spend an average of 49 minutes per day managing e-mail and that 24% spend more than an hour per day on this activity.