Office email still a waste of time

'Quick, look busy, the boss is coming... '

Research out today has reaffirmed something we've all known for some time – that email is a productivity killer in the enterprise.

According to a survey from Mirapoint, nearly a quarter of all emails in corporate inboxes are personal. Add to that the large volumes of spam and irrelevant work email that users must wade through and it becomes a wonder that anybody has time to work, let alone IM their friends.

Marcel Nienhuis, market analyst at the Radicati Group, said: "These results indicate that personal use of corporate email may be higher than employers expect, representing a potentially significant loss in productivity."

Nearly three-quarters of respondents said they forward jokes, video clips and photos to others within the company.

The survey into the use of business email also revealed some slightly worrying trends regarding the potential for inadvertent data leaks and breaches of compliance regulations.

A quarter of respondents said they forward business emails to their personal email accounts while 62 per cent said they have sent business emails from their personal accounts.

Earlier this year, separate Mirapoint research found that 33 per cent of email in corporate inboxes is spam – leaving just 44 per cent of email as legitimate business mail.