HSBC banks on training to cure e-mail overload

Citation

(2006), "HSBC banks on training to cure e-mail overload", Industrial and Commercial Training, Vol. 38 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ict.2006.03738bab.001

HSBC banks on training to cure e-mail overload

The London headquarters of international banking and financial services company HSBC moved a mountain of paper when it relocated to Canary Wharf.

The firm reduced paper filing by 70 per cent when it changed to a new electronic document-management system. But this led to a new challenge – e-mail overload. The bank set out to reduce the volume of e-mail traffic with a training programme that led HSBC, and Team IT Training Ltd, to win a Greater London award in the UK National Training Awards.

The programme changed the e-mail habits of 1,650 head-office staff, with a series of 90-minute best-practice seminars. It reduced the time spent e-mailing, the amount of irrelevant copying in and the resulting stress to employees. It led to better management of e-mail storage, clearer messages, improved use of the e-document management system, and staff able to define when to e-mail, when to telephone and when to hold face-to-face conversations.

HSBC’s Kylie Roberts, assistant project manager, training, said:

The return on investment has been huge. Research says e-mail use is doubling every two years. In just 90 minutes, this training reduced e-mail overload by giving people the tools to manage their e-mail more effectively.

The bank has received requests for similar seminars from New York and Dubai.

The senior manager who sponsored the pilot training programme said:

Our e-mail system had gone from being a corporate asset to a corporate liability. In short, we have regained a key asset – 25 minutes per person per day may not sound much but, scaled up across the 5,000 executives who will attend this training, it gives us more than 200 working years of productivity back.