We spend a significant portion of our working week sending, reading, and receiving letters and emails, many of which might not even be relevant.
While correspondence – both physical and virtual – is a vital cog in every business, it can also be responsible for a great deal of wasted time. Email can prove distracting to your employees, preventing them from focusing on important tasks.
To help boost your company’s productivity and save you both time and money, here are best practices you may want to consider introducing to your workplace when it comes to the handling of your mail.
Set Aside a Specific Time for Dealing with Mail
An easy but effective tactic you can use to prevent your staff wasting too much time sorting mail throughout the day is to dedicate a specific portion of the day solely to this task.
The morning may be best for this kind of work, as you then have plenty of time to send off any physical letters or packages that need to be dispatched. However, at the end of the day, it depends what’s best for you and your business.
Making sure your employees are only managing mail during a certain time period frees up the rest of their day to focus on their other important tasks. It can also prevent time being wasted on letters and emails that, for the most part, are probably not very important.
Introducing Mail Writing Guidelines
When it comes to sending mail out – whether emails or letters – it’s a good idea to school your employees on the most effective writing techniques. After all, you want all of your correspondence to make a good impression on potential customers, clients, and business contacts.
If some of your staff tend to write long-winded messages that could easily be shortened, while others are brusque almost to the point of rudeness, drawing up some mail writing guidelines for them to follow can help to address these issues.
Try a Virtual PO Box
If you run a business from home, either working for yourself or alongside remote-working employees, you may not want to use your home address as a business address for security reasons. Fortunately, you can sign up for a cheap PO box courtesy of PhysicalAddress.com. They provide PO boxes with real addresses that are managed by their own employees. They also allow you to view all of your essential mail online from anywhere in the world.
A physical address PO Box is a highly effective way of managing your business mail and comes with a wide range of benefits.
Teach Your Employees How to Organize Inboxes and In-Trays
Mismanaging mail can cause various problems when it comes to running a business efficiently, and could even run the risk of putting off potential clients. To avoid this kind of mishap, it may be a good idea to dedicate some time to training your staff how to manage all incoming mail effectively.
The method you use will depend on your preference, but one effective technique is to organize letters and emails by time period. For example, correspondence that requires a prompt response can be filed under Urgent. Each piece of mail that arrives should be filed right away in the appropriate folder.
If your employees manage your business mail in this way, you are sure to see instant positive changes in the productivity and efficiency of your workplace.
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