10 Bad Habits that Should Be Banned from the Workplace

Don't Email After Hours

All this late night chatter increases stress, decreases sleep, and affects long-term productivity. If you are a client or a boss of someone, you are affecting the stress and sleep of everyone on your cc list when you send them emails at night. A survey put out by Good Technology found that some 80 percent of the 1,000 Americans polled said they spend seven extra hours a week or 30 extra hours a month checking emails and answering phone calls after hours.

Instead:

• Wait until normal business hours to send emails or, if you must write something, don't press "send" until the morning. Monday morning if you're working on the weekend, please.
• Consider using project management or communication tools with your team that allow participants to choose when they want to work on something, and take them out of a situation where information is pushed to them and they’re in reaction mode all the time.

Why?

Good email behavior results in more productivity and better sleep! One New York real estate executive Ms. Stringer spoke with has banned internal emails and is using new tools like Slack and Asana with his team. Before this ban, he was spending 100 percent of his time in the office just responding to emails – with no time for collaborating, thinking or working on the next project. Using new tools has allowed his team to work on projects in a more streamlined fashion, without a lot of back-and-forth, saving stress and time. He claims to have recaptured at least five hours a week and saved "a day" of his team's time a week due to more efficient communication and streamlined meetings.