Survey: Workplace e-mail is stressful

A nation-wide survey, by recruitment firm Morgan and Banks, found that e-mail is making work harder and more stressful, rather than easier and more efficient.

SYDNEY, 17 July (Asia Pulse) - Australian workers have voted e-mail their biggest workplace stress, above performance reviews, new technology and meetings.

The national survey also revealed that one in three employees had sent an email they later regretted and more than half had had problems with receivers misinterpreting the information.

Morgan and Banks director Peter George said e-mail had also been blamed for an exponential growth in the amount of office paper used.

"People consider information printed on paper to be more believable than that read on the screen, and as a result most people are printing the vast majority of business emails they receive," Mr George said in a statement today.

Australian Paper, producers of printing paper Reflex, report office paper has grown five-fold since 1983, at a compound growth rate of eight per cent, Mr George said.

"We are witnessing a greater use of email in the workplace and in many instances this technology is replacing the telephone as a communication tool," he said.

"As a result a constant stream of e-mails is now accompanied by the same level of anxiety that previously may have been linked to a barrage of phone calls."

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