Intel has joined the “no-email day” brigade. Although it’s not banned, the company is encouraging workers to actually talk to each other.

In Intel’s case the push to look again at the culture of e-mail followed a comment from chief executive Paul Otellini criticising engineers “who sit two cubicles apart sending an e-mail rather than get up and talk”.

A tutor I had a few years ago used to freak out over this kind of thing. He was the editor of an evening paper and had an office next to the editor of the morning paper — a man who insisted on sending memos to people instead of speaking face to face.

According to US research firm The Radicati Group, individual workers sent an average of 37 e-mails a day in 2006 with predictions this will rise to 47 by the end of this year.

Another study conducted by researchers at the Universities of Glasgow and Paisley found that one third of users felt stressed by the heavy volume of e-mail they had to deal with.

When e-mail behaviour was tracked it is was found that many were checking their inbox as often as 30 to 40 times per hour.

Does having Gmail open in a tab count as checking it 30 to 40 times per hour? And who sends an average of 37 emails a day? Either it’s pretty hectic business or I’m just jealous of their popularity.

While no-email Friday sounds interesting, some industry figures have pointed out it just means more work to catch up on on Monday.

I like the idea — it’s far too easy to get complacent and stop communicating directly with one another. I know I’m just as guilty of this as most people but it’s nice to think I can change, even if just a little bit.
Story pointed out to me by the wonderful Lucy.