Zero Email on the Job? Take Our Poll and Give Your Views

An international IT services company based in Paris has an ambitious plan to become a zero-email company within three years.

That's right, no email. (Great move, or folly? Take the poll below.)

The aim is to meet the explosion in data by eradicating all emails between company employees and to replace that exchange with “improved communication applications," including social media tools.

In making this announcement, Thierry Breton, chief executive officer and chairman of Atos Origin, went so far as to liken the information explosion to the industrial revolution.

“We are producing data on a massive scale that is fast polluting our working environments and also encroaching into our personal lives,” Breton said in a company statement.

His company, he added, is "taking action now to reverse this trend, just as organizations took measures to reduce environmental pollution after the industrial revolution.”

Brandon resident Irma Davila gave her take on the issue, noting that "of course" she would "err on the side of social media," as that is a focus of her business, I.D. Marketing & Events, which specializes in Web design, social media and search marketing.

"Most people don't even bother to email me anymore," she said in a Facebook reply to a request for reaction to the Atos Origin announcement.

"They Facebook messsage me or @reply me on Twitter," Davila added. "I know I am a 'special' case, but I also find myself communicating via Facebook even with clients and people not in the social media [business]."

Davila noted, too, that "smartphones have made it easier to communicate via social, as opposed to email, [or] more like in addition to email," a point made by Atos Origin as well.

Also in response to a Brandon Patch Facebook news request, Karen Produm agreed that telephoning has become passe.

But Pordum, whose company, Synergy Legal Staffing, specializes in the placement of temporary, permanent and contract attorneys, lawyers and paralegals in Florida and throughout the world, differs with Davila on the importance of social media tools.

"I almost never talk to my clients, or employees, on the phone," she said. "Email rules in the legal arena unless it's too complicated or something you don't want in writing. Social media doesn't figure into my business at all."

Taking the middle ground is Arlene Jacobs, president of Home Helpers in Seffner, a company specializing in senior care services.

She noted the she uses "social and email interchangeably" and "sometimes at the same time."

Breton noted that at Atos Origin, the volume of emails sent and received “is unsustainable for business.”

“Managers spend between five and 20 hours a week reading and writing emails,” he noted. “They are already using social media networking more than search, and spend 25 percent of their time searching for information.”

The end result?

“Email is on the way out as the best way to run a company and do business,” Breton predicts.

State your position in the poll below and post your views in the comment box below.